


One Night One Shots

by LaCompositora



Series: One Night Only [2]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Alternate Ending, Body Dysphoria, Classical Music, Coming Out, Concert Pianist Elio, Discussed Transphobia, Elio is a Dad, Fix-It I guess?, Homophobia, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Love, Lust, M/M, Oliver is a Momma Bear, One Shot, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-04-20 17:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 31,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14266374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaCompositora/pseuds/LaCompositora
Summary: The concert may have been one night only. But the relationship it rekindled might just last the rest of their lives. These are snapshots of the Lives of Elio and Oliver from that night forward.This is a collection of one shots based off of the universe of my other fic, One Night Only. Read that one first, or things might not always make a ton of sense.On a (possibly permanent) hiatus starting... now.





	1. Snapshot 1: The Encore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Picking up from the end of 'One Night Only', but from Elio's point of view.

            His lips… oh my god his lips! I am certain I will dissolve like a tablet of sugar on his tongue as he closes the tiny gap between us and presses those lips to mine, answering the question that had been hanging over my head for months, since I finally worked up the courage to slide that envelope through the mailbox slot. I had wished I could take it back the instant I let it go, tried in vain to slip my fingers after it and pluck it back out – now I can’t believe that my fickle heart could ever have thought such a thing.

            Every moment after that was a glorious torture, like “see you at midnight” all over again but stretched out for months on end. As I practiced for hours upon hours, talked with the organizers of the Lincoln Center and did press conferences about the concert, as I sat at my piano and scratched notes onto manuscript and looked out towards what my brain lovingly dubbed _new heaven_ , the only thing I could think of was what I might see when I looked up toward the balcony that night. Would I see him, for the first time since Italy? Would I see an empty seat? Would I, worst of all, see someone else altogether, my gift to him re-gifted like an unwanted sweater? When I sent that letter, it had seemed like a power play, moving my queen and saying “check” when I knew there is no way for him to avoid a “mate”. Instead, it felt like I was just as powerless as I had been fifteen years ago, desperately waiting for a response, any response.

            As the date of the concert drew nearer and nearer, my imagination pressed further and further. What if he didn’t come? What would I do with his encore – send it to him to let him know, burn it so that no one would ever know? What would I do with the chilled white wine I was keeping in the fridge for that night, if he would not come back with me – would I drink it all myself, hoping I could forget who it’s intended recipient had been? And if he did come, what would I say? What could possibly be said? Scenario after scenario would burn through my mind as I worked, as I taught students and chatted with fellow faculty. The only place my imagination dared not stray was to the end of his encore, and what came after. That moment was too frightening, too full of potential harm even for a masochistic mind like mine.

            And now it is here, and his lips are on mine, and his hands are holding my back just like they did that first night together, with a grip both gentle and firm. I move my hands from his face to his shoulders to steady myself – I feel suddenly extremely high, as if I might fall over. I haven’t felt this way since Monet’s Berm, this breathless collapse of infinite possible universes into a single one, and not just any one but the one I desperately desire. This is not a memory, played again and again on loop in my mind – this is something new, a composition we are improvising based off of an era long past in an unquestionably modern style. All the same, I hold this moment as delicately as I hold those memories, afraid to drop it, afraid it might shatter in my hands, embedding glass in my palms.

            When we pull away, I rest my forehead against his, trembling slightly. Fifteen summers ago, I had been reluctant to let myself feel – I was too young to understand, too unaccustomed to my own desires. Now, I feel in every inch of my skin, in every pulse of my heart. It tears through my veins – it is overwhelming. “Better now”, I whisper, and I feel him laugh. Oh that laugh… I didn’t realize how much I longed to hear it until it was returned to my ear. I am a boy again as I tilt my head and greedily reclaim his lips.

             I feel a tiny flicker of fear, remembering another second kiss halted hastily in the name of morals or something like them, but the damning words, the hand saying ‘stop’ on my chest never come. Instead, he leans into my lips even more, sitting slightly more forward on his knees so he can draw up to his true height, his hands running up from my back to my jaw so that I have my head tilted slightly back, my throat totally exposed to him, a vulnerable position.  It’s a possessive action, and I feel a thrill race from my toes to my cheeks as I realize that he too is claiming my lips as his own. There is no fear, there is no doubt left in me – all of that has been washed away by years of lips that weren’t his, of ‘not the same’s. I run my hands down his chest and ball one into a fist around the soft fabric of his dress shirt, anchoring myself as I edge closer, until we are pressed flat against one another, chest to chest, thigh to thigh, the other reaching under his coat to wrap around his waist, to pull him to me. I want to leave no room for the time that separates us, I want to fill it up so that then and now blur together as if none of the pain and heartbreak had ever happened. I want to press so close to him that we are back in Rome, back in San Clemente, back in 1983.

            He pulls away, and I hear a tiny, breathy sound come from my lips. He grins, and perhaps goaded on by that sound, releases my face and slowly trails his hands down my sides, slides them under Billowy’s hem and settles his warm palms against my bare sides. I look up at him with unfettered wonder, relishing his touch. Is this real? Something awakes in me that I had long since forgotten, or rather, had not forgotten but had simply ceased to notice, like a constant noise that one no longer hears until it is pointed out. I again crave to know the touch of his soft skin against mine, want to pull him into my bed and see what two can do in such a space. Almost without thought, my hands are responding to his, undoing his tie, pushing his suit coat from his shoulders until they both pool on the ground. My fingers find his star of David as they undo the top buttons of his shirt, and I look up to find his eyes. Those deep blue pools, no longer filled with tears, hold the compassion I remember from the best days of that summer.

            “Oliver,” I murmur gently, tracing his collarbone – he shivers, “Are you… are you sure you want this?” It has occurred to me suddenly that the tables have turned for us in more ways than one. It is no longer I who is in danger of being messed up – Oliver has a life that this could all too easily topple, and as such, I am now responsible for –

            “Elio,” hearing him say my name with such a lambent tone stops those thoughts unceremoniously, replaced by other, less virtuous ones, “I have never wanted anything but this.” He dispels any further fears I may have had by sliding his hands up my back and, with some minor assistance from me, freeing my torso from Billowy’s embrace, before pressing his lips back against mine.

            The tone has shifted. No longer does caution permeate the air. Instead, we are now two starving men, deprived of food for fifteen years, suddenly presented with a feast. Our hands quest with desperation, but also with a confidence gained by years of practice with other lovers, stand ins who let us hone our skills until we could finally use them on the one who deserved them. His shirt is gone as he pushes me to the ground, his right hand twining through my left to pin it to the ground, and I use my free hand to twine through his hair, to hold him to me, to keep his lips on mine.  As he lowers himself to his elbows, our bare chests touch, and I feel something almost electric at the contact. He is still so muscular, and though I have filled out my frame since my youth I am still petite by comparison. Everything has changed, and yet, in this moment, I know that at the same time, nothing has changed.

            Though I am loath to break our lips apart, I eventually do, slightly loosening my grip on him. “As much as I love the floor, I do have a bedroom, if you want. Wouldn’t want your elderly bones to be sore in the morning”.

            He scoffs, but his eyes are glowing with hunger. “Elio, if I didn’t think that the floor might bruise your back, I would have you right here, right now, sore or no.” Despite his big talk, however, he slides off to one side of my hips, offering me a hand to help me stand with him. “But I just got this body back, and I can’t bear the thought of marring it before I get to experience it again”. We are still standing very close, so it is easy for him to reach around me and trail his fingers along my spine. Almost involuntarily, I close my eyes and tilt my head back, and so I don’t know he has moved his lips to just beside my ear until I feel his breath on my skin as he whispers, “And as I seem to remember, good things happen in rooms that belong to you”.

*          *          *

            The morning after is somehow even more agonizing than our very first night together, though for completely different reasons. I do fall asleep briefly, immediately after we have had our fill, the surge of chemicals my brain releases doing their job well. But, as soon as a flicker of consciousness returns only a few hours later, I am wide awake. Oliver is curled up against me, his breath caressing the crease of my collar in a slow, regular rhythm, one arm wrapped across my chest, his legs still tangled up in mine. Though his face is unmistakably older, with creases at the corners of his eyes and faint lines across his forehead, as he sleeps he looks as young as the day we met. He is the picture of serenity. What preoccupies my mind is what feelings will be painted on his body, on his face, in his eyes in a few hours, when the cold light of morning shines through the skylight and casts our sins out of the shadows of night that have so far hidden them. Perhaps last night was simply an outlier, my music and theatrics like a drug, altering his state of mind, muddling his choices, and in the morning he will accuse me of taking advantage of him. Perhaps he will think of his wife and children and feel the disgust I felt that morning fifteen years ago but tenfold, maybe he will push away from me, maybe he will indeed hold it against me. Perhaps he will simply reassess the risks of what we have done and change his mind, flee the precipice’s edge and return to solid ground, to a happy and sure future. My heart thuds so loudly in my chest that I’m surprised it doesn’t wake him.

            And yet. For all my fear, I also feel a sense of contentment. This was everything I had ever wanted. Years of burying my love and regret and pain, suddenly over, even if only for this moment.  I am holding Oliver in my arms, he is here in my bed, in the aftermath of making love with a passion that went well beyond lust. His scent has stained my sheets and will stay, hopefully forever, even if he never again lies between them. What more can I ask?

            The sun peeks out slowly, and I watch as the square of my skylight slowly changes from black, to indigo, to navy, to pure blue, and then so blindingly bright I have to look away. When I do, I find a different blue, the blue of Oliver’s eyes, looking up into my face. We say nothing for a long time, each of us simply looking, savoring the taste of this moment, this pause before our minds return to their churning, ever-thinking state. He lets out a long, slow sigh, and buries his face against my skin, his arm reaching further to pull me into a clumsy embrace. I’m not sure what this means, so I hold my body and lips completely still, hoping he will elaborate. He does, whispering his name into my skin, and planting a gentle, loving kiss on my collarbone. I sigh in return and pull him close, burying my nose in his hair and breathing in the scent of his sweat and shampoo.

            “Elio,” I tell him, again and again, even as my tears begin to darken his bright blonde hair, “Elio, Elio, Elio.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this! I desperately wanted to write this part at the end of "One Night Only", but it felt... wrong for that story. Which is why I'm making this whole set of One Shots - to do all the stuff that didn't fit in that story! So let me know what you think, and if there's anything in particular you want to see from this little alternate universe. Love you all to pieces!


	2. Snapshot 2: The Morning After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver goes home...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this basically doesn't matter at all, but for the sake of understanding one simile, if you don't know who Steve Reich is, give this a listen for ~30 seconds and you'll get it.
> 
> https://youtu.be/vugqRAX7xQE?t=30s
> 
> Also - Oliver POV makes it's return!

            _Fuck._

            I don’t curse much anymore, even in my internal monologue – having two young children around trains it out of you. As the miles close between myself and my house, however, that word starts looping like a vulgar Steve Reich piece in my head. Traffic has trapped us on the bridge again, making me even more antsy. Elio pretends not to notice, because we are thinking the same thing; he too is playing out the next few hours of my life in his head, peeking into moments he will not see, the inevitable _where the hell were you last night_ , then the dozens of truths and lies and in betweens that might satisfy that question, and then the ripples spreading away infinitely from that point. The words that I choose in that moment shall cast the dice for both our futures. He knows better than to ask. I feel a bead of sweat roll down my temple, my fingers tapping nervously against Elio’s score, which lies carefully in my lap.

            “It’s this one” I say almost half an hour later, when we have finally escaped the gridlock and made it to my street. He pulls up to the sidewalk in front of my door and glides to a halt, throwing the car into park. A long moment passes before I can lift my eyes from my feet to find his already waiting for mine. We speak silent volumes, penning contracts and treaties and blank checks, thank you notes and love letters and begs for forgiveness, for one more night like this one. I clear my throat and look away before either of us signs something we might regret. We can’t make honest promises, not yet. Well - I can’t. “Thanks for…” _for reminding me what it means to feel alive, to feel you in my arms and know that you are mine, for waking me up, for everything…_ “…for the ride”.

            When he chuckles, I almost lose the will to leave the car, “Any time”. I open the door, step outside, hesitate, then shut it. I’ve already turned away, steeling myself for what lies ahead, when I hear the window roll down behind me, “Oliver.” I look back and am just barely fast enough to catch something tossed toward me from the driver’s seat. “In case you want to hear it again sometime”. Then the window is rolled up, the gears move back into drive, and he is gone. With a feeling like dread I examine the object in my hand – it is a parking pass for the garage that services his apartment, with his phone number scrawled hastily along its edge. I fish in my pockets (still the suit from the night before), hoping that for some strange reason I might have brought the car keys with me even though she was using the car last night, but I find nothing. With no place to hide them, I will have to find a way to explain the two pieces of Elio I now hold in my hands, and possibly the one piece of me that Elio has kept for his own, driving away into the city with it, leaving my blood to flow sluggishly of its own accord with nothing to pump it.

            Deep breath. As I walk toward the door, I see flashes of a train in my mind. _Not again_ , I think, and I am unsure if it is a plea or a promise. I hesitate at the door, my hand resting on the handle. Suppose I don’t even go in? Suppose I call Elio from the convenience store down the street, ask him to come back and get me? Then I hear Daniel’s sweet laugh muffled through the door, and a responding squeal from Alec, and I remember. I feel tears in my eyes, _fuck, fuck fuck fuck_.

            “Dad!” Alec shouts, abandoning his lunch on the kitchen table and racing to me, all pre-teen pretense of being an adult gone as he careens into my arms. Dan shows a little more restraint but is also beaming with a relieved smile as he stands and walks more calmly from the kitchen.

            “Hiya bud,” I reply, tousling Alec’s hair, so much like my own. His arms hold me tight in the way that only children have, with desperate, innocent love.

            “We were worried about you, Dad”, Dan replies with a careful mix of sincerity and indifference, and I recognize the words for what they are – a double entendre of literal meaning and a warning that I am about to get a hell of a reaming. Like father like son, he too is learning to speak in codes. I feel a mix of pride and shame at the realization.

            “I know,” I say with a sigh, placing Elio’s score on the side table face down as casually as I can manage, using it to conceal the parking pass, hoping it looks like any other report I might bring home, “I’m sorry, I hope it didn’t disrupt you two.” They share a look and my face forms an apologetic grimace. “I guess I’d better go talk to your mother, then.” Their eyes say _good luck_ as I pick my way to our room.

            I hesitate at the door once again. This is different. I have broken no promises to my sons, at least not yet – to them is pledged my life, my time, my soul, and anything in my power to make them happy, and all those things I still reserve for them and them alone. The worst transgression I have committed against them is to worry them on a Saturday morning. But to her I pledged my love and my body, both promises I have now violated. Although arguably I never had them to give in the first place, they may have been Elio’s all along. Perhaps the original transgression is against him, not her. The thought does not settle my stomach.

            _“Where on earth have you been?!”_ the tone is somewhere between rage and elation as she throws herself into my arms and begins to sob. With one hand, I carefully shut the door behind me so the boys won’t hear all that is about to transpire, and I embrace her with the other, letting her tears dampen my lapels. I wonder if, in her state, she will smell Elio on the fabric. I still can.

            “I’m sorry,” I murmur, rubbing her back gently, “I’m so very sorry.” Perhaps the only truth I shall utter all day. “I should have called”.

            “Called from where?” She demands, stepping back and wiping at her puffy face with her sleeve, anger now taking the foreground, “Where were you last night?”

            And here we are. To speak or to die in a whole new context. To wake up from my long sleep, or to hit snooze on the alarm with white lies and apology flowers. In my mind, Elio quotes the famous lines from Hamlet, _to die, to sleep_ , new implications laced on top of the originals, his cryptic smile floating behind my eyes, and then vanishing into a stoic line of ‘I refuse to cry’ as a train speeds away from a station in Italy. But then that boy is my boy, it’s Danny, it’s Alec, both refusing to cry in a future that doesn’t exist yet, both trying to be tough as Daddy becomes a monster, an adulterer and even worse a … married for so many years and yet we’ve never talked about that in any context, would she throw that slur in my face, in front of the boys, would they echo her like the impressionable caverns that children are? I see disgust twisting on their faces and their faces become my parents’, my brother’s, and then hers, not just twisted in disgust, but rage, hatred, pain. I see how she will collapse to the bed, I see the tears pour from her eyes and the wails that will eventually transform into screams of _get out, get out of my house, stay away from my children,_ watch as Alec and Danny’s hands and pulled from mine, forever.

            All this in a matter of instants, before I pluck one lie out of the air from amongst the many, and say, “You’re not going to believe this, but I actually spent the night with Elio Perlman”.

            Her face is wiped completely clean of it’s anger as a dumbstruck expression replaces it. “No,” she says, awe in her voice.

            “Yes”, I confirm, wrapping her up in my arms again so she won’t see the falsity on my face, won’t see the flicker of lust and love as I remember and then the agony as I try to forget, “I stayed really late after the concert and bumped into him afterwards. I told him I loved his playing, and he invited me over to his apartment for celebratory drinks, god only knows why – probably just took pity on a poor old geezer like me. And, as it turns out he holds his liquor better than me, because by the time I needed to head home, he declared I was too drunk even for a taxi and had to stay the night.” I pause to let the lie settle, carefully scanning for any holes or dropped stitches in its fabric, “I’m really sorry I didn’t call. I … wasn’t in the best way”.

            She laughs into my shoulder, a mix of delight, disbelief, and relief. _Thank goodness, I thought he was with some pretty face all night_ ¸ she is probably thinking, unaware of just how right that thought had been. That pretty face looms large in my mind, frozen in the eternal mask of fighting back tears. God, Elio, I’m sorry, you were right, I am a coward still. “That’s incredible, Ollie! What was he like? What did you talk about? Oh I have a thousand questions…” each of which she proceeds to rattle off. I answer them all as honestly as I can without giving up the game, but I am simultaneously not listening at all. My body and half my mind are running on their own, while that last piece of my mind I reserve only for myself has a single minded focus on the moment a dozen hours from now when the rest of the house will be asleep.

            “Elio?” I prompt as soon as I hear the line become live, whispered so as not to wake anyone in the 2 a.m. darkness.

            “Don’t you have class tomorrow?” He asks, amusement in his voice. God how that voice thrills me.

            “Don’t you?” His silence confirms my suspicions and I chuckle softly. Then, the silence hangs – we both know why he’s awake, why I’m awake.

            “So.” He says finally. “Did you speak?”

            I sigh, long and slow, looking for words in the carpet by my feet. “I tried to. I meant to.” I hear the disappointment in the dead hum of the line. “I mean to.” More silence. “Listen, Elio…I want to see you again. Soon.”

            “It’s past midnight, Oliver.”

            The words sting worse than any physical blow he could have offered. “I… I know.” The silence stretches infinitely. The fact that he hasn’t hung up yet means he didn’t really mean that. Or at least, that’s what I hope it means.

            “What did you tell them?”

            “That Elio Perlman invited me over for drinks after his concert.” He laughs, and it sounds almost genuine.

            “Close enough, I guess.” Another wait, and I barely breathe. When he speaks, my heart resumes it’s beating, despite his reluctant, conciliatory tone, “My last lesson is at 5:30, I’m usually home at 6. I practice until dinner at 9, but people can come over before as long as they don’t make noise. The code for the elevator is the last four digits of my phone number, and there’s an extra key hidden behind the painting in the hall outside the elevator.”

            I let out a sigh of relief, “Thank you, Elio”.

            “You’re welcome, Elio”. The line clicks dead. I slump in my chair, running my hand across my eyes. I haven’t spoken and yet I haven’t died. What a lucky, lucky man I am. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been approximately 100 years. I wrote a haiku to explain myself.
> 
> Everything's on fire  
> I am slowly dying friends  
> Save me from this hell.
> 
> Anyway, excuses aside - I hope you enjoyed! I'm sorry, I know some of y'all wanted Oliver to peace tf out of his old life but his poor little boyes.... we shall see if anything more comes of this predicament in the future, though!
> 
> I know these first two have been more story than one shots, but I think going forward, probably less so. Please continue to let me know what you want to see from their lives! Thank you for all your kind words and kudos, as always they do mean a lot to me <3


	3. Snapshot 3: Colin

            A thrill accompanies the metallic clack of unlocking his door. We’ve been seeing each other for upwards of two months now, in moments when my family won’t notice, ‘after work drinks’ and ‘weekend trips with the boys’ the truths I convolute to conceal subtler lies, giving us shelter and providing a safe haven where we can feel the joy of being together. But last week, Elio gave me a spare key along with the passcode for the elevator, told me to come over whenever. Now, it’s as if this is my home too, as if I can really call this ours. Perhaps I can. The thought makes my chest feel tight, with that mix of fear and delight that often lingers when I think of him. Our home, our joy, our life. Ours. Like it could have been.

              Well, no more laters, it’s ‘whenever’ now, and I’m coming over. Earlier, when my last student had left the lecture hall, I had decided I simply couldn’t resist visiting Elio on this beautiful autumn afternoon – we can’t bike together like we used to, at least not without risking life and limb to the monstrous New York traffic, but a walk might suffice, if I can talk him out of his daily regimen of practice. The windows of the penthouse let in the golden light of day, making the whole place feel warm, welcoming. Then again, it always feels that way these days, even when it is dark as pitch outside. Especially when Elio is still practicing, the full tone of the piano like a blanket over everything. I love lying on his couch with my eyes closed, or working quietly on an extravagant meal in the kitchen as he plays, even when he’s drilling the same spot over and over, even when he’s practicing techniques I’m sure he’s already mastered, even when he’s cursing at a particularly challenging passage. His playing is filled with magic, nobody can deny that, but I like to think, perhaps somewhat narcissistically, that I can taste that magic more strongly, more subtly than anyone. Notably, his music isn’t filling the room today, and I frown, hoping a student hasn’t kept him late. I set down my briefcase and slip my shoes off, calling his name softly. When there is no response, I hesitate, debating if I should just go home. But, today is the first day I let myself in, and I’m reluctant to spoil the special nature of this moment. I’ve got time to wait. I move to the kitchen, peer at his wine rack to decide upon something to surprise him with when he gets home, and pour two glasses. Taking my own, I wander over to the living room area, gazing out across the sunlit city before looking down to choose a spot for myself on the couch.

            What I see there stops me dead in my tracks. Sprawled on the cushions face down is a young man, surely no older than twenty two. His golden hair is tangled in spectacular fashion, and his unbuttoned shirt fans out to either side of his torso, pants riding exceedingly, almost obscenely low on his rather attractive hips – someone had a long night. Here. With Elio. I feel sick and hastily set down my wine glass on the coffee table, unable to tear my eyes from the beautiful young man on the couch. I can’t really blame him – the young man, even in this sorry state, is undeniably beautiful. But even so, I feel pain growing in my chest unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. Is this how Chiara felt when she realized? Is this the pain I might inflict on my wife? The agony of betrayal, of realizing you aren’t the only one, might not even be the most important one, it hurts like a hook piercing through the chest, pulling you up out of the water of what you thought was real into the air of something else – the truth. It’s not like I have any claim to him, especially not considering that every time I kiss him goodbye, my lips must necessarily travel straight from his to those of my wife. But even so, I thought… I had thought he knew that he was the most important one to me, that he was the only love that was real to me. I had thought he felt the same.

            A door shuts somewhere in the house, and I look up, snapped momentarily from my reverie. A few moments later, Elio emerges from the hall that leads to his bedroom, looking as disheveled as his… friend. I feel something catch in the back of my throat at the thought, feel the hook drive deeper – he wasn’t even at work, they must have been together all morning. His black curls awry, eyes still heavy with sleep, dressed in loose, ill-fitting sleep wear, he greets me with a groggy smile, saying “Good morning, Oliver”.

            “Good afternoon”, I reply, my voice tighter than I was expecting. He comes over, presses his lips to my cheek, apparently not noticing, his hands caressing my shoulders. I wonder if he touched his lover this same way, fight the urge to pull away.

            “I hope you haven’t been waiting here long - I didn’t hear you come in” he says, yawning, “I had a long night”.

            “So I can see.”

            He grins, a lopsided grin of tired acknowledgement, with no apology whatsoever, and I feel anger stir in my chest. Is this some sort of revenge, for not breaking things off with her? I had thought we agreed that I had to stay with my wife for a while, until we figured out how to proceed, if he had a problem with it, he should have just said –

            “I guess you’ve met Colin, sort of”. His words interrupt my thoughts with the cold cut of a name, _Colin_ , so he has a name, does he? Not even some nameless fuck but someone who Elio cares about, or at least cares enough to know his name. “Yes,” I reply as he claps me on the shoulder and saunters to the kitchen, noticing the wine I’ve left out for him and taking a sip before frowning and grabbing a glass of water instead. My pain continues its slow transformation into anger in response to his casual attitude as he throws together a makeshift meal, his back to me. I wrestle, trying to control my emotions, knowing that they will only complicate things, but I have never felt something quite like this, and I am startled at my lack of control when from my lips tumble the bitter toned words, “Not that I’m one to talk, but isn’t he a bit young for you, Elio?”

            He chokes on the gulp of water he had been taking, spitting about half of it back into the cup and coughing as the rest of it tries to enter his lungs. “ _What?!_ ”. He actually laughs, the nerve, and I feel my blood grow hotter, “Oliver, no. No no, it’s not like that at all.”

            “Oh, then what is it like then?” In my mind, the memories of the last few months are flashing by, each one now tinted red with betrayal, fallacy, “What else could this possibly be?”

            “Oliver, listen,” Elio says, beginning to take me seriously as his voice becomes defensive. “He’s not… Colin is my… my…” I glare at him as he stammers for words, “He’s an … an ex-student”.

            “An ex-student.” I’m unconvinced, and it shows in my voice and on my face. I haven’t acted this way since I was a hot headed teenager – I am no longer able to use language to hide what I’m thinking, am no longer a graceful verbal fencer, but a berserker with a club. “Right, because all your ex-students end up half dressed on your couch. Jesus Christ Elio is that the best you can come up with? Why don’t you just tell me the god-damned truth.”

            His face flushes, and for the first time since I’ve seen him grown up, I see real anger in those eyes, “Well first of all, it’s none of your god damned business who I fuck, family man. Second of all, if you don’t believe me that’s-“

            He’s not given a chance to finish. Colin stirs with a loud groan, his hands coming up to his head as he rolls toward the back of the couch and curls in on himself slightly. It’s clear he’s hungover something awful. “Could you please talk a little... quieter? I’m not having the …  greatest morning.” His voice is hoarse, and I scowl at the thought of what might have irritated his throat. Elio immediately shifts all his attention to the young man, stepping away from me and crouching beside him, and I feel yet another layer of bitterness settle on my shoulders – clearly I am of only secondary importance.

            “Here, Colin, have some water. You’ll feel better.” The young man groans and buries his face deeper into the pillows, but Elio persists, “Come on, sit up. I know it’s bright.” He sets the glass down and wraps his arms under the younger man to pull him up, their touch looking comfortable, familiar. God, how long has this been going on? Has this been happening since before Elio and I reunited, has all of this just been a fun little fling for Elio, a nostalgic blast from the past that meant nothing in the end, a game, a ruse?

            As Elio manages to lever Colin into an upright position, the young man’s shirt falls away. Contrary to my expectation, what is revealed is not the tight, muscular torso of youth. Above a surprisingly soft midriff, most of his upper torso is wrapped tightly in bandages, from the base of his ribs to just under his arms. He coughs as he fully rights himself, steadying himself with shaky hands, and it sounds wet, as if his lungs are trying to expel water… or blood. My anger does not vanish but runs cold, turning into a sort of dread instead. “Holy shit, what happened to him?” I say softly, shock echoing in my voice.

            “I’m not entirely sure,” Elio replies as he hands Colin the glass, coaxes him through the first sip, and steps away. I’m not sure if I’m upset or relieved that his anger towards me seems to have been superseded by his concern for the boy, “He got here at 4 am last night, and was pretty trashed. I’m sure he won’t remember how he got here, anyway. I think there was a lot of alcohol and at least some quantity of drugs involved, since I couldn’t even get him past the couch before he-“

            “No, I mean… I mean his chest. Did he get gay bashed, was he shot, or something?”

            Elio’s face changes to something I can’t quite read, and he takes my arm, pulling me further away from the couch so we can talk in total privacy. “Look, I told you Colin is an ex-student of mine. I’ve known him since he was fifteen, when I gave private lessons. He lives here-,” my stomach does another sickening flip, _he lives here?!_ Some of the anger returns as I realize that this has been going on right under my nose, but I don’t get the chance to object as Elio hurries on, “- because at age seventeen he realized something about himself. And suddenly his family wasn’t exactly pleased with their son’s - well, they insisted that he was their daughter - his ‘lifestyle choices.’ He came to me because he didn’t know where else to turn once they threw him out.” As the truth finally registers, I have to look away, shame rising out of the floorboards towards my chest. “I had the money, so I took him in. He’s … he’s the closest thing I expect I’ll ever have to a son.” He looks away from me and back towards the young man who now cradles his glass in one hand and his sagging head in the other. “I never mentioned him because he’s away at college now and doesn’t come back often. Something must be wrong – his next break isn’t for several more weeks, so he shouldn’t even be here, and he was so much further gone last night than I’ve ever seen him before…” The worry in his voice is something I’m familiar with – I’ve heard that tone from my own lips when my boys come home, quiet and solemn and ‘fine’ when asked.

            “Elio… I’m sorry, I…” I stare at the floor, ashamed of myself, “I shouldn’t have…”

            He stops my apology with a gentle hand on my arm, “Let’s just forget about it. It was a misunderstanding.” I can tell that there’s more to be said here, that the unfortunate parallels between my assumptions and the reality of my own familial situation will come up again, and probably soon. But for now, things are put on hold as Colin breaks into another wracking cough, the gurgling of his lungs a painful sound. “Colin,” Elio says, gentle but firm, releasing me to return to his side, “You need to take those bandages off, you’ve had them on all night.” Though I’m a too far to tell, Colin seems to reluctantly acquiesce with a shrug. I watch as Elio pulls the young man’s arm over his shoulders, wraps an arm around his waist, and helps them both stand. He half guides, half carries the young man down the hall. I sit down in the spot they had just vacated and wait, nervously sipping at my previously abandoned glass of wine. When Elio returns, he sits next to me with a long sigh. “He’ll be alright. Still sleeping it off, I think.”

            I nod, and we sit in silence. Finally, I break it, “Look, Elio, I really am sorry. I should have trusted that you wouldn’t… wouldn’t…“

            He rests a hand on my knee and squeezes, “Yes, you should have.” He meets my eyes, a cocktail of emotions hidden behind the thin ricepaper walls of impartiality, “Because you know I’m not going anywhere.” I nod, a lump in my throat, relief flooding me as I realize that this statement is a tiny reassurance that forgiveness will be granted, if not now then eventually. “I mean, really Oliver. Did you honestly think I would go to all the trouble I did if you were just going to be another fuck?” I don’t know what to say, so I just shrug, dropping my eyes away, taking a sip of wine. “Goodness I thought you were cleverer than that”.

            “You always were the more clever, of the two of us”.

            “So you always say.”

            “I came over to ask if you’d go for a walk with me. Would you… would you still like to go?”

            He thinks a moment, then says, “I think I’d better stay and make sure Colin is okay. You didn’t see him, Oliver, he was really… _really_ …”

             “Then is it okay if I keep you company? For a little while, anyway?”

            He nods. Then, to my surprise, he moves his hand from my knee to wrap his arm roughly around my shoulders, pulling me toward him so I end up leaning into his chest, my head tucked into the curve between his neck and shoulder. I sigh, relief flooding me – I have been forgiven quicker than expected. “I don’t really blame you for being jealous – Colin is a helluva looker.” We both laugh and I give him a tiny shove in minor retaliation for the jab. “So… when do I get to meet yours?” I freeze, fear racing back into my veins – I had hoped he wouldn’t push this, I thought we had reached an understanding – “Kidding, kidding”, he says quickly, running his hand over my shoulder to soothe my sudden tension. But I know that, if he was, it was only halfway – the pain I had felt today must have a mirror image on his heart that has no balm of misunderstanding to soothe it. And sooner or later, it will be my job to heal that wound.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What better way to procrastinate on Finals study amirite?
> 
> So, what do we think of Colin? If we like him I'll keep him (not all the time obviously but he might show up now and again), if we don't he will go back to college and never be heard from again. I mean, I realize you barely met him... I guess what I'm asking is if you're ok with original characters being around or if you'd like the focus to stay on Ol and El. Let me know!
> 
> [For the record, I chose to make Colin trans and not gay/bi like Ollie and Ellie because, though CMBYN is getting lots of recognition for being a great LGBT movie/book (and it is don't get me wrong) one of those letters is notably not actually included in the movie, and as someone who is non-binary myself, I just wanted to toss a little inclusion in there, especially since I haven't encountered any trans/nb characters in any other fanfic.]
> 
> As always, thank you so much for all your support and kindness and just for reading, it's super cool that y'all do. 
> 
> Obligatory disclaimer - don't use ace (or other) bandages to bind, and don't sleep in your binder, and definitely don't do both. You can get seriously hecked up - see Colin's lungs doing a sadness - by doing one or both of those things. I only had him using bandages cuz I couldn't find any info on when not-damaging-to-your-body binders became a thing but as far as I can gather it's rather recent. If you're currently using bandages, duct tape, etc. because you can't afford a proper binder, check out this website where you can request a free one:  
> http://point5cc.com/chest-binder-donation/


	4. Snapshot 4: Colliding Worlds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elio is getting impatient...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RE: the delay on this chapter: Heyyy guess what changing cities and starting an internship is stressfulllll woot woot.  
> If ya'll live in LA and aren't creeped out meeting a stranger for coffee or something lemme know cuz I have like 2.25 friends out here. I promise I'm not a murderer.  
> But if it's any consolation for the delay this one's long af and in TWO PARTS whoa what who allowed this? Anyway, buckle up folks cuz this one shot is really more like a one-and-a-half shot spanning two whole years total leggo.

_ Oliver _

            “Still up for that walk?”

            I fight the urge to look back into the kitchen to see if my family, happily eating lovingly prepared Saturday pancakes, is listening. Elio has never called the house before, and this breach of protocol makes me nervous in at least two ways. However, I am relieved in equal measure – since our [my] misunderstanding about Colin, we’ve gone several weeks without any contact at all. I felt too uncomfortable to go over again unannounced - an American equivalent of the invisible line on our Italian balcony - and the few times I called there was no answer. But the silence, if intentional, is now broken.

            All the same, despite this emotions cocktail I must be careful in my speech. “Hey man! Listen, I’d love to, but I promised the boys I’d take them to the park today.”

            “Great, they can come along too… man,” he says, the last word in audible air quotes, mocking the vernacular of my feigned nonchalance.

            Damnit, the clever bastard. “Ah….” I start searching for excuses, ones that will sound plausible to him and to her, who I can now see watching me casually from the other room, “Well, I mean that’s great but I don’t want them to be a bother-“

            “No bother, I’d love to meet them. I’ll bring Colin, it would be good for him to get outside.”

            I search for anything that might serve to prevent the head on collision of my worlds, but find none that won’t send the one or the other careening off a cliff. So, stifling a sigh and pasting on a smile, I fasten my seat belt and brace for impact. “Well, if you’re sure, great, we’d love to!” I hope he can hear the tiny edge I leave in my voice indicating that I am not entirely pleased with his meddling. The amused lilt in his responses indicate that he doesn’t care. As with the concert so many months ago, he is forcing my hand, though to a much lesser extent. We work out details of where and when to meet, then hang up. I take quick stock of things – breathing steady, hands steady, lips smiling, eyes smiling, shoulders relaxed. The perfect mask of normalcy to wear back to the table, where my pancakes have gotten cold.

            “Who was that?” she asks.

            I shrug, to indicate the unimportance of this detail, and remember just in the nick of time that my lies must all be moderated by the fact that boys aged ten and thirteen can’t keep a secret from their mother. “You’ll never believe this hon, but that was actually Elio Perlman on the phone.”

            She drops her cutlery, “No way. He called you back, after all this time?”

            _All this time indeed_ , “I know, right? He asked if I wanted to meet him for a drink, but when I told him I had promised to go to the park with Danny and Alec, he said he’d be happy to just get out in the air, chat for a while.” I shrug again, to emphasize again how it’s no big deal.

            “How are you not more excited about this?” She asks, whacking me playfully with the back of her hand, “Oh, how I wish I didn’t have to go set up for an event today… boys, I hope you know you’re very lucky, you’re going to meet a very important man.” The boys make the noncommittal affirmations of the young in response. “Oh, you two. Well, do give him my best, and tell him he must come over for dinner some time. My husband, friends with Elio Perlman, well I’ll be.”

            “Yeah, really something.”

 

_ Elio _

            Colin spots him first. I’m surprised he can remember, considering his state when he saw him last. Then again, the way he keeps looking over his shoulder, compulsively scanning the crowd again and again and again, memorizing each face and escape route, maybe it’s not curious at all. I raise a hand over the river of humans until Oliver spots us, and he wades over to us, two miniatures of himself creating a wake behind him. That must be them, I suppose, Oliver children, a little peek into Oliver life. They’re so… real. Too real. Until now, they were just a mirage, something discussed but never proven, nothing more than a hypothesis. But now here they are, with eyes and noses and hair and jaws all stolen from my Oliver, and there is no denying them. They’re real, and their every feature attests to their claim to him. Maybe it is I who is nothing more than a mirage.  I feel a spike of bitterness pierce my chest the likes of which I haven’t felt since 1983, but I shove it down as we come face to face.

            “Hey, Elio!” He says, offering me a hand. His eyes say it all, _don’t do anything stupid Elio_. I nod slightly, keeping our eyes locked as I take his hand – I’m not here to tear down everything he’s built, however much I might like to. He pulls me into one of those chummy hugs shared by men trying to make very clear that they are straight, the kind where the handshake stays between us the whole time. “It’s so good to see you!”

            “It’s good to see you too, Oliver,” I say, stepping back as he releases the hug. Before he releases my hand though, I feel just the tiniest squeeze, _thank you_. I nod again. For a moment, we stand locked, and I can tell that, despite his pleas for discretion, his wishes are not so different from mine. To break the moment, I look pointedly towards the Oliver nesting dolls that stand behind him.

            “Oh, of course. Elio, meet my boys – this is Danny, and this is Alec”. I shake each hand in turn, sizing each boy up. Danny’s handshake is a little too firm, trying to prove he’s all grown up perhaps, but his eyes are like his father’s, calculating, hiding, shy, icy, brilliant. Alec, on the other hand, is open, his smile broad and spreading easily to his eyes, his handshake neither firm nor loose, unselfconscious. A genuine ‘later!’ handshake. He is very young and perhaps these are the traits of youth, but something about the way he holds himself tells me he will retain them even in the face of the realization of life. He and Colin would have gotten along very well, once.

            I introduce Colin in turn, and he shakes Oliver’s hand, saying. “It’s good to meet you, properly I mean,” just a shadow of the rueful smile I remember from his teenage years flickering on his face, “Sorry about a few weeks ago. I was… I’m not usually like that”.

            Oliver flinches almost imperceptibly at the mention of ‘several weeks ago’, but Colin doesn’t notice. His inability comes not from a lack of intelligence, of which he has plenty, but instead from a preponderance of integral honesty. He is incapable of pedaling deceit, and thus does not look for it in others, can’t read the veiled language of those who wish to speak without speaking. In his stead, I glance toward Oliver’s sons, but they either aren’t paying attention or haven’t registered the implication that Oliver and I have seen one another so recently. “It’s fine, we all have rough nights,” Oliver says with a small laugh, one that covers as mirth to disguise his nerves. I know because it’s the same laugh I would have used in his place.

            I freely admit I’ve put him in a difficult position. My phone call this morning was selfish and the way I handled it borders on cruel. I can’t even fully express why I did it, especially since I am finding it hard to drag my eyes from his boys in the same way I find it hard to stop watching as a truck backs slowly and unstoppably into a mini cooper. We are standing now on the edge of the precipice, him and I, stepping blindly forward, hoping it is toward solid ground. Maybe I want us to plummet, somewhere deep down.

            Oliver breaks the silence, being the wiser of the two of us and recalling that the long silences we so often share are not the common currency amongst company. “So, Colin. How’s school going, what do you study?” Park drudgery.

            “School’s fine. I’m double majoring in piano and composition, so I’m busy, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.” He notably leaves out that he’s not going back to school for the rest of the semester, and possibly part or all of the next. Perhaps thinking of exactly this, I see his head turn slightly as he fights the urge to check his surroundings yet again, and I fight my own urge to embrace him, hold his head against my shoulder and use my body to shield him. Instead, I do the next best thing and use words, diverting the focus, “And what about you boys, what are you studying?”

            Alec’s eyes light up at the chance to say his bit, “Well, in science we’re studying the water cycle, which is super fun. It’s all about clouds and rivers and stuff. But everything else is super lame. I mostly just like recess, because we get to play with our Pokémon cards, see?” Out of his coat pocket comes and impressive stack of colorful cards decorated with cartoon creatures. I look up at Oliver, seeking some guidance on how to respond as the young boy starts proudly displaying one after another while spewing what is surely mostly gibberish, but he just shrugs, looking about as flummoxed as me. We share a small grin, a conspiratorial one, before Oliver finally interrupts, “Alright Alec, maybe you can show us more later, somewhere the wind won’t blow your cards away”. The thought of this seems to horrify the boy, who hastily returns the cards to his pocket. I turn my gaze to Danny now, more interested in the more Oliver son, “And you?”

            “In literature we’re reading this old book called The Outsiders,” Danny says with a shrug, “but it’s kind of… rudimentary. So while my classmates discuss it I read Plato under the desks. It’s much more interesting, and informative.” _Like father like son_ , Oliver surely sees these words in my raised eyebrows, since I hear him stifle a small, huffed out chuckle. “Actually, I tend to do that in all my classes.”

            “Which is why he’s failing algebra,” Oliver adds with a wry smile, clapping a hand on Dan’s shoulder that he quickly shrugs off.

            “It’s not like I couldn’t pass it if I wanted to,” he mutters, “It’s just easy, so I don’t see the point in trying. And I’m not failing, I have a C+.”

            “C’s make degrees,” Colin adds. Oliver shoots him a look, to which Colin only smiles. “It’s true.”

            “Maybe, but a Columbia freshman it doesn’t,” Oliver retorts, and Danny rolls his eyes.  

            “Can we play football now?” Alec asks, apparently unaware that he just averted an argument. I notice now that Danny is cradling said ball comfortably in his left arm.

            I look to Oliver, slightly startled. He has always been athletic, but for some reason I never imagined him playing sports. I have imagined that body doing just about everything, but not this. Heaven knows I’ve never played sports beyond tennis, never had the time nor the inclination. “I’m afraid I’ll just have to watch,” I say finally, “Footballs have a tendency to jam fingers if you aren’t good at catching them. And that way, the teams are even.”

            I watch the ensuing game in fascination. Oliver and Danny play one team, while Alec and Colin play the other. The difference in playing style is what interests me, not the game itself, which I have always frankly found a little absurd. Oliver and Danny play with precision, calculation, planning. Alec and Colin play erratically, carelessly, impulsively. Mix the two teams, switch each one’s youngest member, and the game would be a mess of dropped balls and frustrated words. As it stands, the game is full of laughter, light, kindness. Oliver looks the happiest I’ve ever seen him outside of Italy – when they line up to start another play, he always looks up at me and beams, his face aglow, when they finish each play he interacts with each of his boys in turn, a friendly clap on the shoulder or a rough embrace, sometimes even sparing one for Colin. I wish I could kiss Oliver’s beaming face right here and now, wish I could pull him into my embrace and then all the way up to my apartment, not just to make love but also because something so vibrantly beautiful deserves a dais the height of a skyscraper. Yet, unlike in Italy, there is room in my mind for thoughts other than these. Colin is also beaming. He isn’t stopping to look around, to take stock, to plan – he’s just playing, like he used to in his youth, as he used to when he would swirl Ravel and Rachmaninoff from his fingertips and I would reign him in to remind him of technique, like he did when I could still make him laugh.

            Eventually, lacking the infinite energy of the young, Oliver begs out of the game, and once the teams are rearranged Colin has his hands full trying to play two against his one. Oliver joins me on the bench I have claimed, breathing hard.

            “This was a good idea.” He pants, clapping my knee in a friendly manner, leaving it there for a fraction of a second too long before removing it.

            “I’m glad you’ve come to think so,” I reply, not voicing that I’m glad I’ve come to think so too. “The boys seem to get on well.”

            “They do.” On the grass, Danny tags Colin a little too aggressively, and Colin’s shirt is rucked up high enough to reveal the bandages binding his chest. Immediately, Danny pulls back, looking shocked and concerned, “Jesus are you ok?” The game play stops, and I get ready to intervene, unsure if this will be enough to set Colin off. Only days ago, on a smaller venture out, it took much less than this to leave him gasping, crumpled against a wall, eyes so far away. But, to my surprise, there is no sign of nerves as Colin reassures the boys that he’s fine. Though we can’t hear them, it’s obvious that Colin is trying to explain the concept of being transgender to Oliver’s sons.

            “Colin is a brave boy.” Oliver remarks, “It’s not easy to have to… you know.”

            I nod. “He is. More than you know.”

            “More than I know?”

            “More than you know.” I shrug, “That there … he’s just good with people. That’s not bravery, that’s honesty.”

            “Being honest takes a lot of bravery. To stand naked before the world and dare them to say he isn’t beautiful.” He smiles a wistful smile, “I think we both know how frightening honesty can be”.

            I chuckle in agreement, think for a moment, and reply, “You are very beautiful naked too, Oliver.”

            He flushes, looking around hastily to make sure nobody overheard. “Elio…”

            “What, are you ashamed?”

            “I’m not ashamed. But I’m a middle aged man, I don’t think –“  
            “You are very beautiful, Oliver. Any one who says otherwise is lying to themselves.”

            “Nobody else has had the chance to say otherwise.”

            “Not even her?”

            “Not even her. Not for a long time.”

            “Her loss.”

            I watch the boys resume their game, Colin acting as if nothing has changed, because nothing has. He's holding his own but it clearly outmatched by the two younger boys. Danny and Alec may have different styles, but perhaps it is their bond in blood that allows them to work as a team none the less. I wonder what it must be like to be tied to someone in that way at such a young age. I envy them, not having to wait seventeen years to find such a bond. “If you aren’t ashamed, then why do you hide?”

            Oliver’s face takes on that icy look, the one I’ve learned to recognize as the veil that hides all other emotion, as he too watches the boys, pointedly avoiding my eyes. _E timido_ my father’s voice reminds me. “It’s not… it’s not like that, Elio.” Tucked into the hidden privacy between our thighs, his pinky finger finds mine, the smallest little gesture and yet butterflies flicker in my stomach, even after all these years. “Wouldn’t you lie, for Colin?”

            Wouldn’t I? I’ve never had to. He never had any family, at least none that would have anything to do with him, and by the nature of these things he never had any friends to whom I would need to lie, his teachers never cared enough. But if it came down to it, if it would jeopardize his happiness, or even his life not to, would I lie? Would I find a beautiful, tolerable wife, and hide? “I don’t know.”

            “They deserve a father they can look up to.”

            “And they couldn’t look up to you if they knew?”

            “They… I didn’t mean it like... you know I don't think that -“

            “Oliver,” I say softly, sliding my whole hand under his, “I don’t know what you, or they, need. But if you hide this from them, they might just end up living your life over again. Would you want that for them?”

            The façade falls, just for an instant, and I am almost blown away by the maelstrom of emotion I see in those eyes. Then it’s gone, and he’s smiling that over-wide, wry smile. “It’s not so bad, is it?” His thumb traces the bones of my hands. I wish they were tracing more, wish I could pull out the hurt in those eyes into my own body, spare him from it, protect him from it.

            “It’s not so bad. Not anymore. Could be better, though.”

            “Could be better.”

            For a moment, our eyes lock, and we are alone. And I relish that moment, emotional intimacy even if physical intimacy is denied. Isn’t this what I swore I would settle for, back in Italy, just to be by his side? Then why do I so desperately feel like I need him all to myself? Why is it that every rebuttal, every excuse, feels like another stone upon my chest, crushing the life from my body? Why do I feel that every moment we’re apart, I’m no longer alive, but a specter, drifting from moment to moment? Why do I feel the urge to shout in his face that his sons can't look up to him if he's constantly hiding?

            A yelp that sounds like pain from Alec wrenches Oliver’s eyes immediately from mine, and I feel a momentary flare of irrational jealously before carefully tamping it down. Luckily, Alec is not hurt, just startled because Colin has swept him straight off his feet, swinging him around and tickling him to force him to drop the football, and the yelp transforms into quasi-hysterical laughter. Oliver smiles, watching the two of them. I, on the other hand, find my eyes captured by the grey oases of Danny’s. He isn’t playing anymore – he’s watching us, watching me. And I know that he knows. Maybe not consciously, maybe he won’t realize for many hours, or days, or years yet. But those eyes saw what passed between his father and I. There is not approval in them, nor disapproval. Just… observance. I nod to him, and he nods back, a silent agreement, though upon what I’m not entirely sure. Oliver notices his son watching us too now, and in a futile attempt to cover any tracks remaining, he claps me on the shoulder in the manliest way he can muster, and stands. “Well boys, we’d best be heading home – your mother is probably going to want you both to wash up before dinner tonight.” He overrides their complaints, and turns to me, offering me a hand once more. “It was great to see you, Elio. We'll see you later!”

            “It was great to see you too, Oliver.” In a moment of madness that would have mortified me a decade ago, I ignore his hand and pull him into an embrace, using the shield of his back to hide me as I bury my face against his collarbone. He hesitates, then returns the embrace, a meet-you-halfway embrace, trying to say one thing to me and another to the world all at once. I pity him. “Do call when you get home, let me know you got back safe. Tell the missus hello from me.”

            “I… I will.”

            We part ways, him with his boys, me with mine. Colin, still blessedly smiling, asks, “Well, did you have fun?”

            “In a manner of speaking.” I shrug, and nudge him with my elbow, "You, on the other hand, were fan _tastic_."

   

_ Oliver – 2 years later _

            “Dad?” I look up in surprise – it is well past 3 am, and Dan’s soft voice went to bed many hours ago. I set down the (horrid) paper I was grading and pull off my glasses so I can see his timid face, peering around the door frame into my office, a pale sliver of oval lit starkly by my lamp against the darkness of the hall. He wouldn’t be here unless it was important – I feel a twinge of worry twist in my gut.

            “Hey Danny, what’s up?” He takes my response as the permission it was and slips his pajama-clad body into the room. To my surprise, he then turns and carefully shuts the door behind him, ensuring there is no noise as it latches behind him.

            “I…can… I mean…” his hesitation only increases my worry, but I carefully restrain the urge to push, “Can I, uh, can we talk? For a minute?”

            “Of course, always.” I stand up from my desk and walk over to him, putting my arm around his shoulder and guide him to sit beside me on the small couch to one side. He is shaking, and my concern twists tighter in my gut. He’s well into high school now, there’s so many things that can happen to a boy at that stage in life… “What’s up?” I repeat, softer now, prompting him but not pressing.

            “I… so, um…” he lets out an exasperated, nervous sigh, and runs his hand through his hair, “Y’know Mr. Perlman?”    

            I blink with surprise, shoving away a moment of dread – if he knows about what I did with my weekends and 'business trips' he wouldn’t bring it up like this, or with me at all. This is about something else, it has to be. “I, uh, yes. You know I do. We met him in the park a few years ago, you remember.”

            He nods vehemently, more so than seems appropriate. “Yeah. Uh, so, um, I’ve been thinking about that a lot, and, I, uh.” He keeps meeting my eyes, then looking away, his legs bouncing nervously on the couch. “You know him from more than just that one time after his concert, don’t you?”

            The dread is back. Maybe I was wrong. Shit, how much does he know? Other than Elio, Danny is the person who knows me best in the world, and will see right through fallacies, so I fight the instinct to hide behind lies – veils of truth, however… “You’re right Danny, I do. We met when I was in graduate school.”

            “And you were…. friends.”

            “Yes.”

            “…. Good friends?”

            “You could say so.”

            He thinks a moment longer, then lets out another one of those violent sighs, jumping up from his seat, and though he turns his face away from me quickly I am good at reading him too, and I can see that he is holding back tears, “You know, never mind, I… I’m just gonna…” he moves for the door but I catch his wrist in my hand, stopping him.

            “Hey,” I say, gentle but firm, standing to match him, “Danny, if something is bugging you, you know you can tell me, right? Anything, always.” Even if it's that you're about to uncover my lies and rip the family I love apart. Even then, my son, anything for you.

            He stays stock still for a moment, hung in deliberation, before turning back to me, tears cascading down his cheeks. When he speaks, his voice is broken. “I think… Dad, I think that whatever you and Mr. Perlman had back then, I think… I think I have that now.”

            I stand, as frozen as he was, the dread I held before cast aside to instead cradle the fear and trepidation that fills his voice. _Are you saying what I think you’re saying?_ If I guess incorrectly either way, lives shatter – if I am wrong, and confess to the truth I fear he knows, both of my perfect lives could come crashing down in spectacular fashion. But, if I’m right and I pretend I don’t understand… I know what it is to have to hide from one’s own father. I know what its like not to have anyone to look up to.

            In reality, the decision has already been made, was made fifteen years ago when he took his first breath in this world. Seeing the vulnerability, the fear, the nakedness in Danny’s eyes, I know that I would sooner risk my own utter destruction than a scratch on his soul any day. “Danny”, I say softly, pulling him into a tight embrace, letting my shirt front dry his tears as I say the words I myself once longed for, “Danny I am so proud of you”. He is trying to be tough but I can feel his shoulders shaking harder, hear the choking sobs he swallows back as he wraps his arms around my waist in return, holding me as if I were the last pillar standing on a crumbling building, “I am proud of you, and I am here for you, and I love you”. We stay that way for a long time, and I gently stroke his hair, his back, as I used to when he was very young, reminding him that I am still his father, and that no matter what, he is loved always. I eventually decide to break the silence as his breathing returns to hesitant hiccups, and divert the conversation slightly to give him room to recuperate, “How did you know?”

            He pulls away, swiping at his nose with the back of his hand, using the other to partially conceal his red and puffy face. And yet, he wears a wry smile, and from his lips comes a stammering, tearful laugh, “What, about you? Dad, Alec may not have noticed because he was ten, but it wasn’t exactly hard to tell. You two are…” he thinks a moment, eyes trailing off to one side as if the words he’s looking for are tacked on the wall someplace, “Electric. The moment you saw him, you lit up like a lightbulb. Not on the outside, but on the inside.” He shrugs, meeting my eyes, “I envied you.”

            It is my turn to look away and run my hand through my hair. Christ, they do pick up our mannerisms, don’t they? “Really, that obvious?”

            “I mean. Probably not to people on the street. But I know you.” He does, to him I am an open book, despite his youth and my many years of practiced concealment. I don’t know why I’m surprised he knows. “Are you two still… I mean, do you…?” And there it is, the logical follow up I have been silently dreading. What do you tell your son, in moment like this, with so many layers of importance hanging in the balance? I again consider lying, then think better of it and simply nod. He nods back, looking more thoughtful than upset, which is a relief. “Well then, you probably shouldn’t bring him home, even as ‘just friends’. Mom would see it too, I think.” I try to hide the flurry of emotions that mentioning her brings up, but he is too perceptive and hurries on, “Don’t worry. I’m not gonna tell. As long as … please don’t tell, about me, I mean.”

            I nod, my heart slowing slightly. “Of course not. It’s not my –“ I meant to say secret, but I hate that word – being… damnit I’ll say it, being gay, or bisexual, or whatever shouldn’t be associated with secret, with something dirty and hidden. “It’s not my truth to tell”. I want to tell him that, if he does tell her, he has nothing to fear. But I can't, because I honestly don't know.

            He nods, sniffing loudly. “Alright. Uh, thanks, I guess, Dad.” He awkwardly offers me a hand to shake, and I bat it out of the way with a gentle laugh as I pull him back into my embrace instead. When I release him, I keep my hands on his shoulders to steady us both as I lean forward and press my lips to his forehead, as if in ritual blessing, father to son. For some reason, I think of the matching symbols that he and I, and Elio too, all wear at our throats. “Get some rest, Danny.”

            Just before the door closes, he stops and turns back. “Dad?”

            “Mm?”

            “I’m… I promise I’m not gonna tell. But… maybe you should? It’s not fair to a lightbulb to leave it disconnected forever. They usually just end up unused and broken.” God, when did he become so wise? I hold his gaze and nod, acknowledging the truth of his statement, and he nods in return, acknowledging the unspoken words of mine. He’s about to go when I hastily add “Danny.” His eyebrows raise as he turns back one last time. “What’s his name?”

            Even in the mostly-dark of the hall, I can see him flush slightly as his eyes drop to the floor, not in shame but something closer to the awkwardness we all feel when asked about that _special someone_ by a family member. “His… uh, his name is Jacques. His family just moved here from France, I guess.”

            I lower my voice into a conspiratorial stage whisper, “Is he cute?”

            “ _Daaad!”_ he hisses back, the word drawn out in a breathy groan of embarrassment, and I can’t help but laugh, maybe a little too loud if his widening eyes are any indicator. I put up a single hand in apology, stifling the rest of my giggles, “Goodnight, Danny. I love you.”

            “I love you too, Dad.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AWW HE WAS A DAD TO LOOK UP TO ALL ALONG AHWORAWEKL. Hopefully not too cliche or predictable, and also not boring I had trouble keeping this one realistic but also with relevant and not dreadfully everyday content, haha. Lemme know your thoughts, what you want to see coming up, all that jazz! I am listening to your suggestions, I'm just trying not to rush past all the possibilities between here and there, ya feel me fam?  
> As always, thank you thank you for comments and kudos and general support, it makes me a very happy kumquat.


	5. Snapshot 5: Retirement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A non-sequitur jump into the future that comes dangerously close to breaking the literary equivalent of the fourth wall for the sake of indulging my need to write utter fluff.

            “Elio, come in here!” I shout, fumbling to hit pause on the TV remote with fingers less nimble than they used to be. Once I manage to get the damn thing to pause, I call again, “Elio, can you hear me?” Still silence. I sigh and heave myself to my feet with a groan, feeling that obstinate ache in my lower back give its customary twinge. Despite his vehement insistence to the contrary, five decades of sitting feet away from the business end of a piano has started to effect Elio’s hearing, and sometimes he can’t hear me call him from across the house. I find him sitting in the dining room with a mug of chamomile tea, gazing out through his glasses toward the glowing rural sunset. After so long in the city, I think he really enjoys his retirement to the countryside, even if it is an American one. I know I do. It’s like a do over, a chance to live the life we dreamed of all those years ago, albeit with a few more wrinkles in our skin than we’d imagined, and a significantly poorer view of the Mediteranean. “Elio, come to the TV room with me, I have to show you something.”

            He looks up at me in surprise, “Why didn’t you just call me?”

            I smile, offering him a hand to help him stand. “Guess I just wanted to come fetch my dashing prince myself.”

            He rolls his eyes, “Oh lay off old man, I’m nobody’s prince any more. More like the dowager countess.” He lets me help him to his feet, and we both make our way leisurely towards the TV room.

            “Oh hush. You’re just as handsome as the day I met you. Just a little more … broken in.”

            “Ah yes, that metaphor makes me feel so much better.”

            He settles on the couch, and I settle next to him, placing my arm around his shoulder and nuzzling my face into his salt and pepper curls. They may be changing color, but they are as soft and as sweet smelling as ever. How I adore sitting here with him, my love of my life, spending every evening knowing he is just around the corner. Better late than never, so much better.

            “So what did you want to show me?”

            “Ah yes! I had forgotten, thank goodness I’ve got a young mind like yours to keep me in line.” I release him and grab the remote from the coffee table, rewinding the pre-recorded show a little and hitting pause. “There’s a fellow in this movie trailer, and I want you to tell me who he reminds you of.” I hit play, let it play a moment, then look over at him expectantly. “Well?”

            He watches a moment longer, then shrugs. “Who?”

            “You, of course!” I give him a nudge, “Don’t play dumb, he’s the spitting image of you when you were his age.”

            “Is not,” he scoffs, shaking his head, “I was never that attractive. Not all white men with black curls look the same you know, Oliver.”

            “Oh fuck off.” I grumble, as the words _Beautiful Boy_ appear in bold lettering across the screen, before returning to my show. I pause it again. “Clearly you spent a lot less time looking at yourself than I did in 1983. He could be your doppelgänger.”

            He shrugs. “If you say so. I had better things to look at in 1983.”

            “Like what?”

            “Like your beautiful ass, if you must know.”

            I sweep him back into my arms, planting a sloppy kiss on his wrinkly cheek which even now can’t grow a proper beard, “Well then, I’ll tell you - you were, and are, the most beautiful human being ever alive.”

            “Does that include me?”

            I release my captive and look up with a broad grin toward the source of the voice. “Danny!” I heave myself to my feet once more and wrap him in a warm embrace, “Goodness I didn’t even hear you come in - you’re here early!”

            “Made good time getting through the city traffic.” I release him, and he moves quickly to embrace Elio too, “It’s good to see you both.”

             I look past Danny to the young man standing hesitantly in the door way. “And who’s the good looking young fella you’ve brought with you?” I ask even though I know quite well who it is from many a phone call gossip session with my boy.

            “This is Kyle,” Danny introduces, and Kyle holds out a hand, “Kyle, this is my Dad, and this is Elio, his husband.”

            “Pleasure to meet you both,” he says softly, and I grin. I can’t say why, but I like this one more than any of the others Danny has brought to meet us before. And, this one has lasted the longest, upwards of a year and a half now.

            “Come, let’s grab your things, and I’ll show you to your room. And I’m sure you’re starving, Elio spent the afternoon preparing the most delux Bolognese sauce you’ve ever had in your life and fresh baked bread, and you can tell me all about what it’s like the to be a New York Times Best Selling Author. My husband a Pulitzer Prize winner and my son, a New York Times Best Selling Author! How on earth did I get so lucky? Oh! And you probably haven’t even heard the news from Alec yet…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fret not - we shall return to the past again soon, I just had this idea and it was cute in my head so I made it happen right quick. The magic of a one shot collection fic - I can do basically whatever I want, whenever I want, mwahaha!
> 
> My thought is that CMBYN never was a book or movie in this universe, so Timmy's breakthrough role would then be Beautiful Boy instead. It's weird, trying to write them so much older, because they must have necessarily grown so much since Aciman's portrayal of them, both individually and as a pair... It's like take them as we know them, and then add old curmudgeon/sweet old man and see what happens?
> 
> Anyway. Short and sweet and fun for me. Hope it was fun for you too! (But if you're not digging it, don't change channels just yet - I'm not planning on writing anything more this far into the future). Love all your comments, I do read and cherish every single one even though I'm too much of an awkward composery type to muster the courage to try to come up with the proper words to thank you each individually. You honestly make me so happy with every comment and I really cherish that your read my work. Thank you.


	6. Snapshot 6: Birthday Presents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy Birthday, Oliver.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay it was pointed out (thank you Delongpaw) that things have been jumping around and chronology isn't clear so to clarify: This takes place after Danny comes out to Oliver, but Oliver is still living with wife and boys, and visiting Elio on the DL. Okay, now proceed.

            I’m barely in the door when Elio is upon me, wrapping me up in his embrace. Behind him, a rambunctious and wildly elaborated version of Happy Birthday crashes out of the piano, and through the mess of Elio’s curls I can see Colin grinning from the keys. “Surprise!” Elio says softly into my ear, and I give him a squeeze as Colin’s serenade some to an end.

            “Thanks you guys,” I say, with a grin.

            “I got you something”, Elio says, shoving a crisp white envelope into my hands. Despite his enthusiastic grin moments ago, I sense hesitation, almost bashfulness now as he takes a step back, watching my face carefully. I see the seventeen year old boy again, the one who present day Elio has almost completely overwritten in my mind, just for a moment, that uncertainty, tinged with hope. What on earth …? I glance over at Colin, who is only beaming wider than before, clearly in on whatever this is. “Well go on.” The young man chides. I slide my finger under the flap and rip it open, reaching in to pull out a piece of glossy paper.

            Upon unfolding it, I let out a little gasp of wonder. “Oh Elio… that’s wonderful!” I wrap him up in my arms, “The Berlin Philharmonic is having you back!” I release him to look him in the face, and though he’s blushing, he still doesn’t have that wry, cocky-yet-humble, proud and shy smile I was expecting. He’s glancing from me, to the paper, to the floor repeatedly, fidgeting with empty hands. “Elio, what’s the-“

            “Don’t you wish you could be there?” Colin interrupts, swinging his leg over the bench so he straddles it, leaning forward from across the room. Startled by this pointed question, I stammer, “Well, I mean, yes of course but I can’t just leave during the school-“

            “Look at the date.” Elio says softly, and I glance down at the flyer again, scanning the smaller print to find this information. When I find it, I feel my chest tighten.

            “You didn’t,” I whisper. The date of his concert falls right in the middle of my own trip to Berlin as a guest lecturer at Humboldt University. I will be granted a free five day absence, both from the university, and from my family; aside from the times when I will be lecturing, I can do as I please, with no oversight from anyone.  He shuffles some more, suddenly unwilling to meet my gaze entirely. “Oh, Elio.” I cup his face in my hand, and though he leans into it, he still won’t look at me.

            “I… I can still reschedule it, if it’s going to be an issue.” How can his voice sound so meek? Where has the man who stared me down across a concert hall gone?

            “Don’t you dare do anything of the sort,” I say sternly, tilting his head up so his eyes meet mine. “Elio I love it. I love it so much.” I run my thumb across his cheekbone and place my forehead against his. “You and me, together in Berlin. I can’t think of anything better. Thank you.”

            I hear him let out a shaky breath, then say, “And, here’s the rest of it.” From his back pocket, he pulls out nine tickets. Four of them are business class seats on direct flights to and from Berlin. The remaining five are front row tickets for the Philharmonic, two pairs and one single ticket.  “I know you might have already gotten plane tickets from the University, but I figured-“ I stop his words with a kiss, unable to hold back a moment longer, even as tears stream down from my cheeks, even as the hand gripping his shoulder and cradling his face begin to shake.

            “Elio, this is beyond kind. This is… how could you ever think I wouldn’t want this?” My voice breaks halfway through my last sentence, because we both know how he could think I wouldn’t want this, “This is the most wonderful gift I’ve ever been given.”

            “I should tell you, there’s probably going to be some amount of paparazzi, because of all the –“

            “I don’t care.”

            “Are you sure?”

            “Absolutely.” I’m surprised to find that there is no hint of deceit to those words. Now that I’ve been given this opportunity, nothing in the world could force me to give it up. I fold him into my arms, closing my eyes so I can simply feel him against me. I always see him as so much bigger than he is. His presence in a room, in my heart, is massive, built out of his own unshakable knowledge of his abilities, his confidence in himself. But underneath that, when I hold him without his shell, he is really still quite small, just as fragile and fleeting as the rest of us. As his arms wrap around my waist, almost hesitantly at first, then firmly, I wonder how one man can be two things at once. I’m beginning to see that I no longer can be. “I’ll be playing just for you.” He whispers, and the combination of love and pain in his voice makes my heart break.

            We stand that way for a moment, until Elio clears his throat and takes a slight step back, indicating that I should release him. He hastily wipes his own cheeks with the handkerchief I’ve come to know is always lurking in his back pocket, and says, “Well, we’d best be going, I’ve made us dinner reservations, and we’ll be late if we don’t hurry." He hesitates, glancing at me with his coat half on, "Unless, you've got plans with your fam-"

          "We're doing something on Friday so the boys can stay up later. My evening is free."

          He nods, pulling his coat the rest of the way on. "Alright. Don’t make a mess of the place while we’re out, Colin.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I actually intended this chapter to contain all of Berlin, but... I almost wanna leave you guys just to imagine what shenanigans they get up to (especially cuz the Berlin section I started was long and rambly and frankly just a mess). That said, if y'all want some little glimpses of Berlin, I will oblige. Also, keep letting me know what you want to see! I know there have been a few requests for things, so know I'm definitely getting there (specifically re: Elio's life as a performer and Colin).
> 
> If this snapshot seems weirdly random, short, and not as full of meaning and implications as usual, it MIGHT be because it's setting up the next chapter, that I may or may not already have mostly done, that may or may not be making me CRY INSIDE. *chuckles evilly through the tears*.
> 
> As always, thank you so much for all your kind comments and kudos and just for reading. I'm trying to be better about responding to comments but I'm shy and dweeby little parakeet so please don't feel bad if I don't reply to you it's not cuz I don't love you I promise. I check my email obsessively after I post cuz every single comment makes me get real excited, so know that your comment does make me very very happy.


	7. Snapshot 7: Berlin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Journals are great summaries of the important parts of travel...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: This is _not_ the aforementioned chapter that is making me cry inside. I'm holding that one back for a while longer.

_Excerpts from the Journal of Oliver Singer, 24 th of March, 2000_

            …I think it’s something about Europe. In New York, it’s easy to remember – New York is responsibility, is expectation, is my ‘real’ fake life. When we’re together in the city, there’s a damper on us, the looming remembrance of what must also be. But ever since 1983, Europe has been where my mind lived, lives, where I am free, where I can love and live as I want to. Europe is for me the make-believe land all kids run to, where they grow up to be the person they dream of being. And when we landed, when I stepped out and saw the European architecture and smelled unmistakably un-American air… suddenly, I was that man again. We were only a train ticket away from returning to Italy. I almost suggested it. I was free, and I almost forgot. _Almost forgot_ , the unofficial motto of my life…

            …The two concerts I attended with Elio by my side were, of course, phenomenal. We would get there incredibly early, so we were the first ones in the door, and then Elio would explain each piece on the program to me in exquisite detail, telling me about it’s place in the musical repertoire, in history, in context, and give me hints of what to listen for. And then, as the orchestra played, he would squeeze my hand whenever something incredible happened, whenever something delighted him. The music was of course amazing to hear, and from the front row too, but I think what I cherished more was the opening of the gate into Elio’s mind, even for a little while. His thoughts and feelings are like a maze, kept under lock and key. Puzzling together the shards I get is part of why I love him, part of the game we play, but all the same – just this once, I got to know what he thought as he thought it. It made the music more alive than ever before.

            And the night of his concert… what can I say? He plays well, and he plays well with others. He charmed the music right out of his orchestra, made them play better than they could have on their own, because he needed them to in order to make his music as best he could. The Warsaw Concerto, and Rachmaninoff’s 3rd piano concerto, with a Liszt piece as the encore, all incredible, and Elio… when he performs, he glows. The doors to his mind and heart open, and suddenly, the blinding light of everything I love about him is visible, unfiltered. And during those moments when he passed the burden of playing completely to the orchestra, he would turn, directing that brilliance at me alone, he would smile, and suddenly, I would remember _I’ll be playing just for you_. Oh Elio, if only you knew how much I longed for you to do just that when you were young, what I would have given to know you played only for me. I didn’t stay until the end of the bows, I was too busy pushing my way backstage. He was thinking along similar lines, and when he spotted me he pulled me into a lung crushing embrace, the glow still encasing him swallowing me up too. And I never wanted him to let go. I never wanted to let go of him. I’ve never wanted to let go…

            …Without the constant need to be watching the clock and our backs, a piece of us came back that I hadn’t realized was missing. Perhaps I did not realize because there are no words to exactly describe its shape, but the difference it’s reappearance made was more than tangible. It was the difference of making one another laugh not just for a moment but for ages, until we were struggling to draw in air. It was the difference of wrestling on the bed, not for sex’s sake but for the sake of fun, the sake of relishing how it feels to be together. It was going out to dinner and never stopping to dwell on a weighty pause, on a misplaced or fumbled word. It was kissing him in the darkness of our bed, not with the desperate passion of rationed time, but with the casual languor of someone who has all the time in the world. And when we weren’t making love, we would walk and walk in the night, long after we felt tired, long after there was a waking soul to see our travels. It was like we both agreed without speaking that we had spent long enough sleeping, and now would not waste a single second to such an endeavor. _There is time enough for sleeping when we get home. For now let’s be awake_...

_Excerpts from the Journal of Elio Perlman, 24 th of March, 2000_

            …I sometimes forget what it must be like to experience concert music for the first time. I’ve lived and breathed it for so long that it is a part of me, it lives in my skin and my veins. And so, though I was blown away by the Phil’s performance of Tchaik’s _Romeo and Juliet,_ Brahms and Bruckners’ first symphonies, and _A Short Ride in a Fast Machine,_ it was nothing compared to when I would occasionally glance over and see Oliver’s eyes glowing with awe. He is no stranger to this music, but I purposefully (humbly) requested that they program music I thought he might not have heard but would like. I was gratified to see that he regarded them with the same wonder as he did my father’s statues, seeing them for what they were – miraculous works of art. However, in retrospect I have done a good amount of interrogation of my subconscious regarding my choice of the two titled pieces…

            … and the Orchestra was just as brilliant as before. There is no greater gift that can be given than such a sturdy base upon which to build. They were unshakable, even in the face of my trademark unpredictability. I improvised a whole section replacement in the Rachmaninoff, caught in the moment, unable to contain myself, and they continued unphased, indeed perhaps were even more vivacious and full of feeling than before. When I embraced the concertmaster and conductor afterwards, there was genuine brotherhood there. Playing music together is, after all, among the most intimate experiences possible, and to do so well even more so.

            Perhaps there was one greater gift. To be able to look up from the keys, to look out from my tower and see Oliver, watching me with eyes filled with tears, to be able to play and not only dedicate each and every note to him, but also to know that for only the second time every note was heard by the one for whom they were intended … That was the greatest gift. To be able to embrace him after my final bow, and know he heard it all, know he understood and was there with me all the while, that was the greatest gift. To go to the after party celebrating three exhausting nights for the orchestra and kiss him in the golden glow of drunken bliss and hear the nearby musicians cheering, clapping, whistling, and feeling Oliver smile into my lips instead of pulling away - _that_ was the greatest gift…

            … It felt so much like Rome. The freedom, the reckless abandon, the ability to be together and be nothing else, the hotel room we shared and the passion with which we made love there. We sang together in the streets, wandered around through the nighttime, kissed in shadowed alleys, and dreamed of San Clemente. We laughed in a way that we hadn’t in a long time, laughter without oversight, without veils of other meaning. Joy without regard for past or future.

            In fact… it felt too much like Rome. This type of joy, I have learned over the years, does not stay, does not linger to grace the heart for more than a few days, weeks, two months. Without even knowing it, I was storing snapshots the whole time, images of him that now play as a foreboding slide show in my mind: Oliver in the front row watching me, Oliver sitting across from me at dinner and taking my hand, Oliver dancing with me slowly, gently in our room as we shared my new earbuds and listened to Dave Brubeck. And for some reason, even though just hours ago his lips were on mine, and his eyes were saying the words we still have never said with our mouths, maybe never will say, I cannot shake my absolute certainty that I am about to lose him again. I have not felt so afraid since…

            …Colin seemed fine when I got back. Assured me that everything was great, nothing had gone wrong, he’d only gone a little overboard with the takeout Chinese food on my credit card. I want to believe him – after all, it has been almost two years. But I worry so much. If something were to happen, and I wasn’t here to help him, I would never forgive myself. He has been improving so much, but I still wake to the sounds of his nightmares from time to time, still rush to his room and try to wake him, hold him as he weeps into my shoulder. Would it had been me, and not him. Would it had been me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cuz I'm stuck at work with no way to do my work until my computer finishes scanning (it's been 3 hours I'm dying) so why not update a little earlier than usual? I hope you enjoyed, and are braced for the next chapter.  
> If you're interested in the music referenced in this chapter, but don't have time to listen to many hours of music, here's the order I recommend:  
> -Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet  
> -John Adams Short Ride in a Fast Machine   
> -Addinsell Warsaw Concerto  
> -Brahms Symphony 1  
> -Rachmaninoff 3rd Piano Concerto  
> -Bruckner Symphony 1  
> As always, thank you all so much for your feedback, support, and for reading! I wouldn't write if it wasn't for you guys <3


	8. Snapshot 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Serious homophobia and slurs and terrible people in this chapter. Also some pretty strong language.

            “Mr. and Mrs. Singer, please do come in.”

            My wife steps in ahead of me, and Principal Lewis shuts the door behind us. As I take in the scene within the office, I feel my chest tighten. Accompanied by two grave looking security officers, two boys stand in the corner. One of them is burly looking, with a black eye quickly darkening on a defiant face. The other is Danny, with a clearly broken nose, dried blood streaked across his face and matted into his hair, his face swollen and blackened in too many places to distinguish between them, other bruises developing on his bare arms, his clothes a mess. His breathing sounds heavy and pained, and one arm cradles his lower torso gingerly, defensively.

            “Oh my boy,” my wife exclaims, starting towards him, but Principal Lewis stops her with a hand on her shoulder. I bristle at his casual attitude towards my clearly injured son, but say nothing, hoping this will be a quick signing of papers before we can take him to the hospital.

            “Please sit, Mrs. Singer, Mr. Singer.” We do, reluctantly, but I don’t take my eyes from Dan. He isn’t meeting my gaze, but every bone in his body, every angle in how he holds himself and every shaking breath screams _please, please save me_. “I’m terribly sorry to call you from work, but it was rather urgent. As you can undoubtedly ascertain, Daniel here has gotten into a bit of an altercation.” As my wife places her hand across her mouth, I realize she’s crying, and I place my arm around her shoulder, in some small comfort. I wish I could do the same for my son. “He and Allen were caught fighting between classes in the boys room – that’s when we called you.” Danny shifts slightly at this accusation, and when I look back towards him, his eyes have finally met mine. His guard is down, a rare occurrence these days, and I know, I know from the frightened tears welling in his eyes that, whatever happened in that bathroom, he is much more afraid of what is going to happen in this office. I brace myself – it’s not just a cry for help, it’s a warning.

            “Shouldn’t we wait until Allen’s parents are here too?” I interrupt, looking back towards the principle’s stony face.

            “I didn’t call Allen’s parents,” the Lewis replies, “I called you because Danny was the one who provoked the fight.”

            “I did not!” Danny objects, his voice breaking in the middle as Allen tries to lunge at him and he finches away, the security guards stepping between them.

            “Did too!” Allen retorts, spitting on the ground, “It was fucking disgusting.”

            “Boys!” The principle yells and they both fall silent, though their body language is speaking volumes.

            “It sure doesn’t look like it,” I remark, gesturing at Danny, “It sure looks like Danny was the one who got the worse end of the deal, and from more than just Allen.”

            “Be that as it may, he provoked Allen and his friends into a fight, and thus is culpable for the results.” The principal shuffles some papers, pulling out a pen.

            “Look Mr. Lewis, I’m sure there’s been some sort of misunderstanding,” my wife tries again, “Danny has never been aggressive, he’s very shy. He wouldn’t ever try to start a physical conflict with-“

            “I’m telling you, Mrs. Singer, that he did.” Mr. Lewis says once more, clearly getting annoyed. “He didn’t throw a punch, but he goaded the boys into their actions nonetheless.”

            “How?” I demand, feeling heat rising in my cheeks, “What kind of action could possibly justify him being beaten like this?”

            Silence hangs for a moment as I stare into the principal’s eyes. He looks away, lets out a long sigh, and says, “Mr. and Mrs. Singer, I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, but Allen and the boys were provoked by witnessing Daniel participating in homosexual behavior.”

            What I’m sure is intended to be a stunned silence hangs in the room. And, perhaps for my wife, it is; her eyes have gone wide, her face is white as a sheet. The principal’s face looks somehow simultaneously grim and smug, Allen’s face reflects only the latter emotion. Danny has collapsed into himself, leaning back against the wall and making himself as small as he can without sinking to his knees. I, on the other hand, feel anger rising from the depths of my chest, simmering, threatening to intensify to a rolling boil. I carefully put a lid on it. I select a flat, dead tone to ask, “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

            “I know it’s hard to hear. But when Allen walked into the rest room and saw Daniel kissing a fellow classmate,” he shrugs as if to say _whaddaya gonna do?_ , “It understandably violated his sense privacy, morality, and safety. He pointed out that such behavior is not in line with the schools moral expectations -” Yeah, I bet he did, probably with a couple of slurs and spit in the face, “- and Daniel responded by kissing his classmate again while making a provocative and rude gesture.”

            “And so Allen beat him.”

            “He stopped the activity.”

            “And he couldn’t just walk away?”

            The principal looks surprised at such a response. “I think we both know that such restraint is a bit much to ask-“

            “Is it, Principal Lewis?” I ask, shifting forward to lean my elbows on his desk, boring into his eyes with my own gaze, “Is it?”

            “Well, I…”

            “Are you trying to tell me,” as I speak, I feel a flash of anger escape its container, and my voice begins to raise until I am almost shouting at the end, “That who my boy decides to kiss justifies him being beaten like a dog?”

            “Mr. Singer please, we are not here to debate morality, we are here to discuss the proper discipline for you son.”

            “Discipline for _my_ son?” I exclaim incredulously, knocking away the placating hand my wife tries to lay upon my forearm, “Discipline for _my son?_ What about for the boys who look like they nearly killed him‽”

            “His actions provoked them!” Lewis finally loses his cool too, rising to stand, “They were outraged and violated by the egregious actions they witnessed. I don’t blame them for what they did in the face of such provocation.”

            “You’re telling me that being gay is as bad as hitting someone.”

            “I’m telling you I can’t allow someone to practice and promote such activity in my school.”

            “What about beating up people different from us, is that something you can allow to be practiced in your school?”

            “Mr. Singer I think you are purposefully avoiding the point-“

            “No, I think _you_ are missing the point, Mr. Lewis.” I point to Danny, “That boy right there is scared, he is hurt, and he has done _nothing_ wrong. And you’re letting his attacker, the smug sonofabitch standing next to him get away with assault.”

            “Well, in my eyes, and the eyes of the faculty, Daniel has done something wrong, something potentially dangerous to our entire school, and Allen’s actions were a form of self-defense.” We stare at each other, my face undoubtedly red with anger. Who the fuck does this guy think he is? How can he possibly believe such absolute garbage? Distantly, I hear ‘honey, please’, but I ignore her – this isn’t about her anymore. Has it ever been?

            Mr. Lewis breaks the tense silence, “And to be frank, Mr. Singer, and with apologies to you, Mrs. Singer, I’m not entirely surprised by this reaction.” From that stack of papers he’s been shuffling, Lewis pulls out a tabloid magazine from several weeks ago with photos of Elio and I in Berlin decorating the cover. They’re private photos, intimate photos, taken without our knowledge - hand in hand, arm in arm, locked in warm embrace. _Elio Perlman, a Fag?_ is plastered in big, red, suggestive letters across the front.

            And at that very moment, I snap. The little voice warning me that I should deny the accusation is no longer nearly loud enough to be heard over the rapid, deafening throb of my pulse. How dare he? How dare he bring Elio into this, how _dare_ he … I can almost physically feel rage flood my every vein, anger like oil boiling over the edge of the pot and bursting into flame on the stove top. “Well so _fucking_ what?” I explode, knocking my chair over as I stand with more ferocity than I imagined I possessed, “So _fucking_ what if I am Elio Perlman’s lover? What does that _fucking matter?_ ” I slam my hand against his desk, and am pleased to see the sneer fixed on his face waver. “My concern is not what you think of who I do or don’t fuck, Lewis. My concern isn’t even what you think of who my son fucks. My concern is that you feel that being gay is legitimate reason to _let him fucking die_.”

            “I never said-“

            “ _You as good as_ ,” I bellow, and everyone in the room flinches at the savagery. Without thinking, I knock the entire contents of his desk to the ground, sending papers flying, glass paperweights and picture frames shattering on the floor, not for effect or to create chaos but simply to release some of the utter fury that feels ready to rupture my very frame, “You said that him kissing somebody in the bathroom is justification enough for these boys to hurt him so badly he looks like he came out of a war zone, their hatred a legitimate response to an act of love. An act of love as a goddamn ‘provocation’. They could have killed him, and you say it’s his own fault for being a goddamn teenage boy. Well _fuck you_ , Lewis!” I storm over to the four men in the corner, and am pleased to see Allen as well as the two security guards cower away from me as I put a protective arm around Danny and lead him towards the door. “ 'The proper discipline for my son', for  _my son_. Well fuck you and your goddamn homophobic policies. Self defense my ass." I release Danny to take a threatening step towards the desk and lean across it, so my face is only inches from the principal's, "You think it's dangerous, that my boy likes other boys? You think that the other students are in 'danger' because they all might 'catch the gay' from him? Well I'll tell you what I think is dangerous, Lewis. I think it's dangerous that my boy can't be himself without being beaten to a pulp. I think it's dangerous that he had to stand here, covered in blood, next to the bastard who wants him dead, and be told that _he_ is broken, that _he_ is wrong, that he's an 'abomination' or whatever you goddamn bigots call us. I think it's dangerous that other kids here are going to have to hide who they are, because now they've seen what the administration thinks of people like them. That's what I think is dangerous, Lewis, not that my boy has the courage to love in the face of hatred. So you can go to hell, you fucking bastard.” I walk a few feet away to pick up the tabloid from the floor and throw it towards Lewis's face with my full strength; he barely deflects it, “Oh, and in case you were wondering, to be clear, yes, Elio Perlman is a fag, and so am I. And this fag is taking his fag son home so he never has to see your goddamn disgusting face, or step foot in this goddamn shit hole, ever again.” I storm out of the office, ushering Danny ahead of me. Just before I completely exit, I snarl, “Oh, and expect many, _many_ calls from my lawyer, Lewis.” I pin the now cowering Allen with a piercing glare, “And if I ever,  _ever_ catch you or one of your cronies near my son again, you will fucking pray I let you get away with such gentle injuries as these.” I slam the door so hard the frosted glass of the window shatters in a cascade of tinkling ice.

            As we make it to the parking lot, I realize that Danny is absolutely sobbing, and that I have stinging tears of rage running down my cheeks as well. I stop dragging him and instead wrap him up in my arms, putting up a physical shield to compensate for the psychological shield I cannot provide. I intend to squeeze him hard but immediately lighten up when I hear him gasp in pain. “Danny I’m so, so sorry.” I rock him gently as he chokes and gasps, too exhausted to fight as strangled noises escape his lungs, his broken nose making them all nasal and painful sounding. “You’re never going back there again, I promise you, we’ll find someplace else, someplace better.”

            “B-b-… but mom. And me, and you.” He stammers, and the recollection of the woman I left sitting in the office slams into me like a tidal wave. The blinders of anger had completely blocked her from view.

            “Ah fuck,” I whisper, and he nods slightly, his hands digging into my back. “Well, don’t worry about that just yet, we need to get you to the hospital, I think you have a broken rib-“

            “Oliver, Daniel wait!” She comes stumbling out of the school hastily, her hands full of papers, her hair more awry than seems possible given she wasn’t involved in any physical conflict, “Oliver, what _was_ that? How could you say all those things, what are we going to-“

            “I said them because they were true, Delilah!” I yell, and she takes a hasty step back, looking frightened, “I said them because they were true.” As I repeat it, my anger drains away, leaving only infinite sadness. “I said them because my son deserves a life full of happiness and fulfillment, free from assholes like Lewis. He deserves to feel love the way he feels it, and not be afraid that doing so could land him in the hospital or the morgue.” I look her in the eyes, those eyes I once told myself I loved, and I begin to cry anew, “I said them because… because I deserve that too. And if you’ve got a problem with me for that, I understand. I understand if you’re confused and angry and hurt because of me. But if you have a problem with my son for that, then …” I don’t finish the sentence, I’m not sure how to. The sun seems to have dimmed as we stand there, the three of us hanging in an utterly still spring afternoon, the world on pause. I’ve never seen Delilah look so lost. She’s a strong woman, brilliant and capable in every way, which is part of why I loved her, once. But now she stares at me as if she knows nothing at all, a single tear smearing her makeup down her cheek. The world is irreparably different from how it was twenty minutes ago when we walked in, sharing a concerned frown, arm in arm. We can’t go back to fun family meals in our dining room, or vacations to Italy. And we all know it.

            “Ollie…” she says softly, stepping forward hesitantly, and placing her hand against my cheek, “Oh Ollie…”

            “I’m so sorry, Lilah.” I whisper, the full implications of what I’ve just done to her and to my family starting to hit home, “I really, really am.” I wrap her in my arms, and after a moment of tension, she relaxes into the embrace, dropping the stack of papers she had been holding. And for a moment, all three of us are weeping, weeping at the cruelty of life, of other people, of ourselves and what we do to those around us, to those we love, to our own souls. Delilah releases me and repeats these same actions with Danny, wrapping him up in her arms and sobbing, her hands gently stroking the back of his head, even as he sags against her, relieved that she doesn’t hate him – I share his relief. She can hate me all she likes, just so long as she doesn’t hate him, doesn’t cause him that pain.

            When she eventually releases him, she holds his battered face gently between her hands, looking him in the eyes. “Fuck that awful man.” She says, and even I take a step back. I have never heard her curse, nor have I ever heard her speak with so much venom in her voice. She looks back at me, and though there are many, many emotions there, I can tell the brunt of the anger burning in those eyes isn’t directed at me. “Don’t let anyone tell you those things are true.” It’s meant for the both of us, and I have to look away as more tears pour down my face. She turns back to Danny. “You are perfect, and beautiful, and deserve all the love in the world.” She lets the silence hang so that her words can sink in. And in that hanging silence, I feel… light. The weight of years of fakery, years of pretending to be happy, pretending to be the perfect husband, pretending not to be asleep, is gone. I don’t have to hide Elio anymore. I don't have to hide myself anymore. I don’t have to live two lives anymore – just the one. It is going to be messy, it’s going to be complicated and it’s going to hurt like hell, but having lanced the wound and drained the lies, it's going to heal. No more cover stories, no more vapid smiles. No more rolling out of Elio’s bed at 9 am Sunday morning so I can make it home on time. From now on, I’m not servant to two masters. No Oliver One and Oliver Two. Just me. Just Oliver. And I can be just Oliver for Elio, and for my sons, and maybe even for Lilah. Just the one, just the best possible Oliver.

            “Now, we need to get you to the hospital, Danny. And Oliver,” Delilah pulls out some tissues from her purse, “You’re getting a bloody nose – you clean yourself up, I’ll drive.”

            Oh shit, I didn’t even realize. I take the tissues and wipe at my lower face, startled to find that they are drenched in ruby immediately. I look down at my shirt front and see it stained crimson top to bottom, glance at the back of Delilah’s shirt and see it similarly stained. “Oh god, Delilah, I’m sorry,” I say as I climb into the passenger’s seat, pinching the bridge of my nose and tilting my head back.

            She looks at me with a small smile, and I can see that it’s a strong face covering rubble. “Me too.” She starts the car, and we leave the school behind.

 

            When he picks up, I am at first unable to speak. Hearing his voice, just the same as it has always been in a world which seems to have utterly changed is overwhelming. He’s been in this version of the world for a while now, I realize – it was just me who needed to catch up. It is not until he repeats “Hello?” that I finally find my voice and murmur “Oliver,” into the receiver. And then, completely unexpectedly, I begin to cry, right there in the lobby of the ER waiting room, trying to muffle my sobs and cover my face in the relative privacy of the corner where the pay phone stands. “Shit, Oliver is everything okay?” I can’t speak, can’t reply, I am too overwhelmed. How can I, over the phone, explain to him that now, when I give him my name, I feel that it is a name worth giving? How can I explain that, though I was always completely his, now, I am more so, I am more than I could ever have been before? So I just cry, and listen to Elio’s beautiful voice as he tries to soothe me over the phone. “Just tell me where you are,” he says finally, “I’ll come get you.”

            I sniff, then say, “I’m at the hospital, Elio.”

            “Oh my god, are you hurt, are you sick?”

            “No, I’m okay Elio. It’s Danny-“

            “Oh my god-“

            “He’s going to be okay. A broken nose and some cracked ribs from some asshole homophobes at his school.” I hear him sigh out in relief, but in that sigh is a question too. My voice breaks every few words as I continue, “I’m calling you because… Elio, I’m going to need a place to stay, and I wanted to make sure it was okay to drop in tonight, I know you sometimes have things…”

            The longest silence of my life hangs in the air. And we’ve shared some long ones before. With every aching instant, I feel more fear lodge in my ribs, doubt suddenly bubbling up from a place of insecurity I thought had long since been sealed. Suppose he says no? Suppose he turns me away, suppose I waited too long, and he has outgrown me? I am on the verge of begging him for words, any words, when he finally breaks the silence. His speech is so soft, I can barely hear him, and I realize there is fear trembling in his voice too, “For how long?”

            _Are you sure_ , is what he’s really asking, _are you sure you aren’t going to break my heart again, are you sure you won't change your mind and get on the train after all, are you sure, are you sure_? That’s what he’s been asking for almost three years now, in his way. And finally, finally, finally I have the answer, the salve that will heal our wounded hearts, the promise that both of us have been waiting on for eighteen years. “For as long as you’re willing to have me.”

            I don’t know what I expect him to say. I’ve never been able to imagine what this moment would be like, though I’ve longed for it to come since the day we first parted. In the end, he doesn’t say anything. I hear him start to cry on the other end of the line, and they’re unfamiliar tears. I’ve held him through tears of pain, of loss, fear – never before have I listened to his tears of joy. They're lighter, almost laced with something bright like laughter, gentle and soft and so... beautiful. Hearing them brings tears to my own eyes, knowing that he cries for me, for him, for us,  _for us._  We stand, crying together for who knows how long, reorienting ourselves to this new reality, growing accustomed to how it feels to walk around without shackles on our feet. Finally, with broken voice, I hear him say “Yes, yes of course. Take care of Danny, then come over whenever you need to, do you have your key?”

            “I never leave it behind.”

            That night, we fall asleep on the couch together, wrapped in each others' arms, two full boxes of tear soaked tissues crumpled all around us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MMMMMMM THIS IS THE ONE THAT MADE ME CRY.  
> I hope I did it justice. It needed to be so many different things at once, and I hope I did them all as well as they needed to be. I was gonna hold this back a few more days to quintuple check it but I have no more self control so here we are. 
> 
> As always, thank you for your kindness and for reading. It really does mean a lot to me and gives me a reason to write and to be creative in a way I haven't been for a long time. <3 I always love to hear your thoughts so leave them if you can spare them.


	9. Snapshot 9: Annella

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fallout, and a happy ending.

_Elio_

            I take the rest of the week off from work. Oliver doesn’t, because of course he doesn’t – he survives by continual motion alone, and luckily for him there is plenty to be done even beyond the University, calling lawyers, meeting with police, visiting Danny in the hospital, talking with Alec, and his bosses, and and and… I, on the other hand, can’t keep it together for long enough to teach a class, a lesson, to let music try to shove more feelings into my chest when right now, there is no space left. The first day, waking up on the couch with him tucked against my chest on a Wednesday morning, I was so overwhelmed my sobs woke him up, and he had to hold me for almost an hour before I could collect myself. Every time I thought I had calmed down, I would look up and find those eyes, completely open for the first time since… I don’t know if I had ever seen them that unguarded. And in those eyes I saw concern, I saw affection, I saw his own fear and worry, insecurities bred by years of uncertainty, and I saw… I saw love. And every glimpse was a fresh wave of emotion washing over me, washing me clean anew. I eventually had to simply walk away, because I knew I might sit there, pulling myself together and falling back apart in his eyes ad infinitum.

            From that morning, anything could push me over the edge into tears I then struggled to conceal; Oliver coming home after work, sitting down to dinner, filling out apparently infinite paperwork, brushing his teeth in my – our – bathroom, coming out in the morning and pouring some cereal, kissing me a gentle goodbye even in the midst of all this turmoil grabbing his briefcase and sweeping out the door. Scenes of domesticity that I imagined in my weakest moments of hopeful stupidity, pictured as warm comforts on the coldest nights of solitude suddenly brought to life – and all because of an act of hatred. I can’t focus on anything else, the good and the bad. My piano practice is cold and lifeless, because I’m not loving it like it needs to be loved. I can’t. For so long, I filled my playing with that which Oliver wasn’t there to take. Now, after fighting back against the darkness, in others and himself, he’s finally come to claim what I would have saved for him forever on the most sacred shelf of my soul, and I find myself staring at my motionless hands on the keys, unable to bring myself to create a note that will not improve upon the silence. Upon being blindsided by the greatest joy I thought might never come, paired with the infinite horror of that joy being brought about via the most terrible catalyst, I have been emptied out.

             I make sure to tell Oliver not to mention details of what happened to Danny directly around Colin, worried it might make things worse again. Seeing Danny last night, accompanying Oliver to visit him, had been hard. Though the bruises are starting to grow less livid in color, the suffering he has endured is no less apparent, in his skin, in his bandages, in his eyes. It took only moments for me to realize that three years ago, in a hospital hundreds of miles away, without my knowledge, Colin must have looked this way, this battered, broken, perhaps even more so. And he was all alone. The thought had left me so physically ill, I almost collapsed on the floor, but mustered all my strength to plaster it over with a comforting smile. Danny feels now how Colin felt then – I must be strong for him. Oliver feels now how I felt then, when I found out - I must be strong for him as well. I have been for three years. Now, discarding the old bags, I happily heft the new ones. I would carry the world for him, I will be your Atlas, Oliver. Just promise me this time that you’ll stay.

            I try to apply a local anesthesia to this overwhelming – Happiness? Pain? Confusion. - as two pairs of men navigate a Steinway D, the final gift of my beloved and recently departed teacher and friend, into my apartment. Whether or not I truly need this princely gift is up for debate, but when I was informed a few months back that it had been left to me in his will, I simply couldn’t bear the thought of turning it away. It’s delivery being today, however, while I still feel so fragile, is slightly less than desirable. They tuck it so that it interlocks with my Fazioli, like two halves of a ying and yang, their two glistening black surfaces like fraternal twins.

            Once the piano has been tuned and the men have left, I watch with a distant smile as Colin carefully runs his hands across the lid, lifts it, and seats himself. “She’s beautiful,” he comments, dancing a few ringing lines of Debussy from the keys to test her out.

            “She is,” I agree, putting a hand on his shoulder as I come move to stand behind him, peering in to look at the strings and soundboard, still familiar from weekly lessons almost a decade past. “It looks like she and Samuel will get on just fine.”

            He looks up at me in surprise, “You named the Fazioli?” I shrug. Naming instruments is considered childish by some, but as soon as the beautiful Italian machine stood in my living room, proud, noble, handsome, capable of infinite wonders and wiser than I would ever be, I knew that he would have to be named after my father. It was the least I could do, even if he would never know. “So, will you name her, too?”

            I gaze at the two pianos, not quite touching and yet still locked in a gentle embrace, filling in each other’s negative space, each amplifying the other’s grace. “Oh that’s easy.” The Steinway is beautiful, and yet in the cant of her lid I see clever, perceptive wit, quiet knowing. The silent grace of those who are aware of their own intelligence and feel no need to prove it. “She’s Annella.” I walk to the far end of the piano slowly, running my hand along her matte side. “ _Come stai, mamma?_ ” I murmur, giving her a little pat.

            “Here, you should really be the first to play her,” Colin says, hopping up and gesturing to the bench, “She’s yours, after all.”

            I hesitate a moment, then slowly walk to take my place. My fingers have touched these keys a thousand, thousand times, and yet they feel unfamiliar. As I gaze across her stretching length, too big for this space but happy enough to be here, I find I am at a loss. Just as my mother could not heal my wounds as a boy, still she cannot heal them now, cannot tell me how to contain and control all that I am feeling. Only I can do that. All that she can do is give me the comfort, wisdom, and love only a mother can provide.

            That’s when I know. I play through the brief introduction, and then, thinking of the woman sitting alone in a house in Italy so many miles away, and thinking of two young men in hospitals, one past and one present, I begin to sing:

_Songs my mother taught me,_

_In the days long vanished;_

_Seldom from her eyelids_

_Were the teardrops banished._

            In the brief pause between the stanzas, I look up across the piano, to where Colin is sitting now at Samuel’s bench. He is smiling, but his eyes mirror the tears floating in my own. As I begin the last four lines, he joins me in his sweet alto voice, improvising gentle harmonies to lay atop my own baritone notes.

_Now I teach my children,_

_Each melodious measure._

_Oft the tears are flowing,_

_Oft they flow from my memory's treasure._

            As we finish the piece, I think of what Annella would say if she knew, about Oliver and I, about why and how we are what we are. She is too … forgetful these days to fully understand even if I told her, but I wish I could go back to when she would have, back to the days when, I’ve come to realize, she most certainly did know about Oliver and I, even before I did, perhaps before anyone did. I wonder what she would say. I wonder if somewhere, deep down, she knew about more than just 1983, if she also knew about 1998, about 2000, in the quasi-psychic way of mothers. She wept for me, I know she did, in those days, though not out of regret. I think she would weep again today, as I have wept.

            She would have loved Colin – they share the same heart. Sometimes, he does things that I swear are straight from her, mannerisms he can’t have picked up from anywhere else, even though the two have never met. The expression he’s wearing now is one of them, of mixed pride and sadness and love. Love – the love of a child. He is mine to protect, to care for, to cherish, just I was Annella’s. Perhaps someday a piano will be named Elio – the thought makes my chest ache. I never intended to have a son. Perhaps the best gifts are always the ones we don’t expect.

            “Alright, my turn,” Colin says suddenly, standing and striding quickly to take the seat I hastily vacate for him. He stretches his arms out wide, cracks his knuckles (making me wince), and settles his hand on the keys. “Maybe… ah yes, let’s try this.” He plays the bright opening of _An American in Paris,_ the Steinway leaping to life in service of this drastically different mood just as well as it gently murmured for the Dvořák. Then, he stops, very suddenly, causing an almost physical jolt with the abruptness. I look down at him sharply, surprised. “Oh no,” he says in mock dismay, his voice simultaneously flat and over-animated to demonstrate the irony in it, “It looks like there’s too many parts for me to play alone.” He looks up at me with the least convincing face of innocence I’ve ever seen. “If only there was someone else who could play the other parts…”

            I roll my eyes, walking slowly to the Fazioli. “I don’t need cheering up, Colin. I’m quite happy.”

            “Oooof course you are.” He says, the stretched out syllable containing all the disbelief that my statement clearly merits. “I can tell by the way you stare out the window for hours when Oliver isn’t here, and how your smile fades away whenever he isn’t looking. I’ve never seen anyone happier.” I scowl at him from across the span of the pianos, and he grins. “C’mon. You know you always have fun when we do this.”

            “Why can’t a man just mope in his own house?” I mumble, setting my hands on the keys, though a slight smile has already snuck onto my lips. I shove it away, and with overemphasized reluctance, say, “Alright, you start.”

 

_Oliver_

            I smile at the sound of Gershwin through the door as I fumble with the keys around arms full of groceries. After stopping by the hospital to see Danny, and visiting Alec at Delilah’s house, I bought all the things necessary to cook Elio a veritable feast - it’s our first weekend properly together, and despite the piles of legal papers (and legal fees) piling up on my desk, despite the memory of this afternoon when Danny’s eyes filled with strong, silent tears when the doctor came to inflict new healing tortures upon him, despite the fact that my very career is being held by its neck over sheer cliff, despite everything, I want to celebrate. There is so much bad in this world -we much also cherish that which is good, and Elio is one of those things. Arguably, he is the first, and among the greatest of those goods in my life, rivaled only by my sons. He has waiting patiently for so long, and deserves to know that I haven’t forgotten that, that I am immeasurably grateful for that. I didn’t deserve it. Don’t. So I intend to pay my debt of love as best I can in every way, starting with food, the universal currency. A loaf of bread to bake in the oven, a bushel of vegetables to cook with a cut of beef I fully intend to make fall-off-the-bone tender, and the various herbs, spices, and luxury oils needed to make the richest sauce known to man. And, to top it all off, I stopped to get a rich chocolate torte from the bakery down the street. I just barely manage to keep it from toppling off its precarious perch atop all my other prizes as I finally jimmy the door open.

            I hurry to the kitchen, not sparing a glance behind me in order reach a counter in time to save the precarious jumble of foods. As I carefully extricate myself from the bags, I frown – how is Elio playing all those notes? It doesn’t seem possible, even for him, and it’s awfully loud… when I finish unpacking, I turn, and my jaw hits the floor. A second piano, as beautiful as the first, sits in what only hours ago was empty space. Colin and Elio are playing the piece in duet, apparently completely improvising the division of parts and all from memory, stomping and hitting the fallboard and ‘beatboxing’ through percussion parts, laughing as they call out to one another intermittently over the music:

            “I’ll get the trumpets, you get the violins!”

            “No wait, shit what about the bassoons?”

            “AaaAAH wait wait no I can get it I can –“ 

            “Nonono that’s not how it goes!”

            “Yes it is!”

            “No it definitely isn’t, cuz then we missed the-“

            “Shit you’re right go back!”

            “Wait, we can’t play all the-“

            “Sing it, sing it!”

            Through the laughter, their voices join in the cacophony to sing parts that even twenty fingers and two pianos can’t quite cover. Not wanting to disturb them, I take a seat on one of the chairs against the kitchen island, a delighted smile taking up residence on my face. It feels good to properly smile. It occurs to me that, in all the time we’ve spent together, I’ve never heard Elio sing while sober. His voice is really quite lovely, as is Colin’s, even though they’re being silly and trying to imitate various instruments and not necessarily singing with the intention of sounding great. They’re playing, and not solely in the musical sense. Though the action is completely different, the dynamic reminds me of playing ball or tag or make believe with my boys when they were young, the same easy companionship, laughter, love. It’s all a game, play for play’s sake, for the sake of the laughter and the love. I feel an emotion somewhere between sorrow, elation, regret, and hope nuzzle it’s way up to my heart, and I feel pinpricks in my eyes as the finale of the piece comes crashing out of the piano and the two men’s voices, with huge tremolo chords and a final fortissimo hit at the end leaving them both whooping for joy in between peals of laughter.

            It’s only then that Elio, from his seat at the Fazzioli notices me. “Oliver!” He cries between gasps, standing to come greet me. His smile beams, and he seems more vibrant than he has all week as he departs the keys.

            “Did the piano give birth?” I ask as we embrace, and Elio chuckles.

            “Haven’t you noticed him showing?” He responds, making me grin back. “Nah, a gift from my late teacher.”

            “Helluva gift.”

            “Indeed. And he’d be appalled by what we’re doing with it, he hated Gershwin.”

            “How can anyone hate Gershwin?”

            “Beats me.” It’s a relief to see him smiling like this. I know that as hard as the last few days have been for me, they have been just as hard for him. He’s happy I’m here, but perhaps not entirely happy with the circumstances. I can’t blame him. He deserved better, he deserved for me to come out for him and him alone, not for me to be forced out by (admittedly merited) rage. But what is done cannot be undone, and we must build from the foundations we have laid. I’m not sure what happened today, but clearly, some of the pain has been alleviated, at least for a little while. From here, I can begin the lifelong apology I owe him. He takes my hand and pulls me into the open area of the living room, looking over at Colin. “Do you know _Unforgettable_ by Nat King Cole?”

            Without answering the question, the young man begins the opening. Elio pulls me in to him, reaching up to wrap his arms around my neck, resting his cheek against my shoulder. “Dance with me, Oliver.” Without hesitation, I wrap my arms around his waist, nuzzling my face into his hair. As Colin begins to improvise pianistic embellishments on the melody, we gently sway, the golden hour rays of sunlight setting the whole scene in gilded hues. And, for this moment, I realize why Elio was smiling so brightly – because in this moment, right here, everything else can be put on hold. As long as the music is playing, while we share laughter and love, share a brotherhood unique in its shape and form, a story whose plot only we truly know, the rest of the world need not exist, because it has no power over us, not right now. And, in a world where it’s just me, him, and the music, what other feelings can there be but joy?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please accept this explicitly fluffy ending as penance for all the tears of last chapter. It's gonna be okay. The song Elio sings is "Songs my Mother Taught Me" By Dvorak, in case that wasn't clear.  
> That said... next chapter will either be waaay fluffier even than this, or it's gonna be another emotional train wreck. Haven't decided yet. I guess the trade off is: do you want 2 more chapters, or 3 more chapters and the extra one is very very sad (but also something I haven't seen any other fic deal with)?  
> As always, thank you so much for reading. All the comments for the last chapter made me feel so warm and fuzzy I love you guys all to death.  
> Oh, and also - happy pride :)


	10. Snapshot 10: Italy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A return to where it all began.

_Elio – Four Years Later_

            Walking around the villa is surreal. All through the planning process, buying tickets and arranging for a car, through airport security heightened since 9/11, even on the flight itself, it felt like a dream, like we would leave the plane and be someplace unfamiliar, somewhere new. But as soon as we began to roll through the Italian countryside, it all flooded back like a tidal wave. Not a single thing has changed – it’s like time has stood still here. And yet, _twenty two years_ , we were both thinking it as we stepped out of the taxi and breathed in the hot, heavy, sweet summer air, _twenty two years ago two men fell in love here, and died in ghostly embrace each others’ absent arms._ I haven’t been here since god only knows when, visiting Milan instead to see my mother. And yet, it could just as easily have been mere days since Oliver left me standing on a train platform, since my mother brought me home and I wallowed in the emptiness of the vacuum left by another’s exit.

            Well, one thing has changed. With both parents now gone, with two new vacuums taking the place of the one now filled, the place lacks some part of it’s soul. I had been half hoping that somehow, they would still be here, that somehow returning to this place would bring them back. Much to my disappointment, it has not, just as when I called the villa weeks ago they did not pick up and share the phone as they used to. However, as we walk among the grounds, leaving our bags on the porch to wander the gardens, meander silently through the grass, come to the water’s edge, I see glimpses of them in my mind’s eye. Some of them are memories only, a vivid picture brought momentarily to life as it’s background aligns perfectly with the world in which I now stand. But some of them are more like visions, them as they were when I was a boy, young and beautiful and vibrant, watching with knowing smiles as Oliver and I sit, hand in hand, on our rock. I swear I see Vimini further down the shore, dangling by her knees from a tree branch over the water and waving to us. I note each place, ghost spots that long into the future I know I will return to, breathe in their intangible presence as an old man and remember. Some people remember with memorials on piazzas. Some need only a tree arching over the water, a smell, a gentle breeze, to remember.

            “Do you remember the last time we sat here?” Oliver asks softly, his fingers tracing the back of my hand. I let my toes touch the water as my mind flies effortlessly backwards in time. “Of course I do.”

            “And do you have any idea how badly I wanted to never leave this spot? To sit with you forever, staring out into the infinite world?”

            My throat closes up, but after some hesitation I manage, “I wasn’t sure. I hoped so.”

            We sit in silence for ages, listening to the gentle breeze of late afternoon, the bugs and the birds, smelling the sweet smell of fruit trees wafting from the still vibrant orchard. My mother, a decade ago, had told me the orchard was dying, that her beautiful trees were waning, but I see no sign of it now. The trees, if anything, are more laden with fruit than I have ever seen them.

             When Oliver speaks again, I’m surprised to hear his voice crack, “Would you have stayed?” I look over to see several tears streaking his face, and instinctively reach to brush them away. He pulls away from me, wiping them himself hastily on the back of his hand, “No, I’m serious Elio. Would you have left the way I did, if our roles were reversed?”

            I’m shocked by this abrupt shift of tone – we hardly ever discuss the ‘before’ period of our relationship anymore. “That doesn’t matter anymore, Oliver-“

            “Yes, it does,” he insists, “It does to me.” His eyes, growing red with tears, are filled with emotions I haven’t seen in them for years. They look like they did on our very first morning together, almost, full of love but also fear, vulnerability, longing. “It does to me.”

            I look away, uncertain what to say. At the time it felt like, were it my choice, I would have been physically incapable of leaving him, felt like the only reason I could let him go was because it beyond my control. At the time, it felt like I would no more have cut Oliver out of my life than I would have cut off my own hand, so precious was he to me. But, it was not I who was transplanted into a world where I could not stay. It was not I who had a family, a career, a life waiting for me across an ocean. What if Oliver had been in high school, and I had been twenty four – I would have been just on the cusp of notoriety, just starting to get reviews in newspapers, calls from orchestras, from record labels. Would I have abandoned it all to be with him, would I have bet that the love would last, that a young man barely old enough to be called a man wouldn’t change his mind as he had so many times in just the course of weeks, would I gamble everything on that? Had I not known already that my parents would accept me, or worse had known they wouldn’t, would I have given up their love for his? _…would have carted me off to a correctional facility_. What is worth more, a hand, or a life?

            The words I speak are chosen with care. They are meant as comfort, I hope, to the man whose love I now have the honor of receiving, and to whom I have given my heart without reservation or doubt. But, with a twist of something like guilt, or regret, or apology for every bitter thought I’ve ever had, I find that I also mean them to be the truth. “I don’t think I would have stayed, Oliver. I think, in the end, I would have made the exact same choice.” I muster a weak smile for him, “We always have been so alike.”

            Our silence is heavier now as we enter the house. Nostalgia makes the air thick with hidden meanings as we spot all the places that hold the ghosts of our youth. _Twenty two years…_ We make our way upstairs, hesitating outside his room, my room. It feels almost invasive to enter, this place still sacred to our younger selves. How can we soil their urgent passion, their unspeakable agony, by revealing to their ghosts that one day, their torment ends? And yet, enter we do, and I am taken aback by how little has been cleared away. My old posters still hang, some clothes of an unbearably 80’s style still hang in the closet. The bed is still made, as if waiting for someone who never comes.  Oliver puts his arm around my shoulders, squeezing me gently. I wonder if he too is seeing every day and every night spent in this room, every single instant condensing into the single raindrop of this moment.

            I wander through the door that connects to the room in which I had stayed that summer. Some of the books I read are still sitting on the shelves, covered now in a layer of dust –the urge to take them home with me, to reread them, makes me tuck a small volume into my coat pocket. I gaze out the window, looking out on the grounds from above, recalling how I would stare out this way for hours, wondering if and when Oliver would return. God how I pined… If only you knew, Elio, if only you knew that one day, every day, the man you longed for will come home and kiss you gently, will hold your heart with the gentlest care and will let you be his, will let you step inside his body to share his soul. If only you knew.

            “Elio,” I turn. Oliver is standing in the doorway, his face unreadable. “Come here.” I do, expecting him to step aside so he can show me something in the other room. He doesn’t. Instead, as he had many years ago in this exact spot, he slowly lowers himself down to his knees. I almost laugh – it doesn’t seem quite the mood for something so sexual and so juvenile, especially since I cannot help noticing how though the action was smooth and easy twenty two years ago, now it is slow, old bones aching in their trajectory downward. I only start to realize what is happening when, instead of reaching for my trousers, he reaches for the back pocket of his own, dropping not to two knees, but just the one.

            “Elio,” He says again, his hands cupping a still hidden object against his chest now, “You are the best thing that has ever happened to me. Twenty two years ago, I may not have understood, may not have been capable of understanding. But I was never able to take my heart back from you because in your hands, it beat faster, surer, truer than ever before, or ever since. Somewhere in Northern Italy in 1983, we had something precious. We found the stars, Elio, and the moment I lost them I regretted it. That kind of love is granted to us only once, and I wasted it. I threw it away when I should have held it more tightly than I have held anything before. But because of you, because of _you_ , I was given a second chance I did not deserve. You are better than me, you are braver than me, and every time you spoke when I was resigned to death, you saved me, over and over and over again. And there is nothing I can say to thank you, nothing I can say to express how grateful I am that every time you chose not to turn me away, but to welcome me back home again. I never had a home until I found one within you. You are the only place I have ever felt safe, felt wanted, felt like I fully and truly belonged. The wonder I feel for you has never waned, and I know it never will. Because I… I love you, Elio. I love you so much.” An incredulous, breathless laugh escapes him, “God, I’ve been so scared to say that out loud for so many years, but it feels like the truest thing I’ve ever uttered. And so, I need to ask you something, from the deepest part of me, here, in this place where I first lost and found myself in you.” He opens his hands to reveal a small black box gilded with a few elegant lines of gold. He cants back the lid to reveal a beautiful golden ring that glistens in the setting sun, with three small diamonds embedded in it in a diagonal slash across the band’s width. “Elio, will you marry me?”

            I stare at him in shock, then look back to the ring. His eyes are glowing, and I can almost hear his heart thudding in time with mine as we hang in this moment. “Oliver, I… I … we, we can’t, it isn’t lega-“

            “It is now,” Oliver says softly, his hands beginning to tremble slightly, the light specks scattering off the diamonds shivering on the walls, on my skin, on his face, “Maryland gave out the first license just a few months ago.”

            My breathing catches. Could we really? My heart races and stops, my chest swells and feels ready to burst. After so long, I thought that I was used to having Oliver in my life, had finally lost the giddy thrill of knowing he was mine. But now, I feel it all anew, feel that rush of delighted energy, the burning joy of being given something that I didn’t know I wanted but now desperately crave. I feel so… alive. Slowly, I lower myself to my knees in front of him, reaching out one hand to cup his, the other to cradle the side of his face. We stay that way for a long moment, hanging in this golden moment.

            “Do you know how happy I am?” I whisper to him, and I see a flicker of a nervous smile on his lips.

            “Is… is that a yes?”

            “Of course you don’t know,” I murmur, pulling him into a kiss. “Yes, yes of course it is you great goose.” He laughs at my appropriation of his word, pulling me in for a tight hug, before releasing me so he can carefully, almost reverently, slip the ring onto my finger. I stare at it in awe, then meet his eyes. And in them, I see… there are no words. I see the whole of my life in his eyes, the whole of myself, everything I have been, am, and will be one day. I reach out to twine my fingers into his hair, marveling at how the gold glint of the ring mimics the pepper-specked golden strands. “Thank you, Oliver.” I whisper, resting my forehead against his. He repeats the words back to me, and claims my lips gently, holding me against him with the hands that haven’t lost their gentleness in all the years, that still cradle my body like it is made of the thinnest, most precious glass. Held in the hands of my… my _fiancé_ … I return the words that Oliver was finally brave enough to speak.

            “I love you, Oliver Singer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh heck I just couldn't do it, couldn't make our sweet boys sad, so y'all got the fluff. The thing I was thinking about doing was that many stories put Oliver and Elio in New York, but very few stories actually reach the point of having to deal with 9/11. I wonder how that day might have felt for them... eh maybe I'll write it someday.
> 
> Also re:chapter limit spook - I'm not gonna say that, after next chapter, I'll never write anything new. This upcoming one happens to be the one that, were I editing in the future, I would put all the way at the end. If I'm feeling it though, I'll still write more. But I need a solid inspiration I can seriously run with to write, and this next chapter is the last one I have right now. If y'all wanna pitch specific things, however, do so - I'm all ears. Some of your suggestions from last chapter are already percolating so I am listening I promise :)
> 
> Sorry for not responding to comments in a timely manner, you guys this week has been so great for my actual life holy heck. But also I've been crashing hard cuz I've been working hard so hence me being way behind on comments. Thank you for all of them, I'm going to be replying as soon as I post this, because they all mean the absolute world to me. Thank you thank you for reading, you're the greatest. 
> 
> Also, I realized that I have TOTALLY FAILED as a marketer. I'm writing a story about a pianist, and I talk about being a composer, heck my name is "the composer", but I've never unapologetically plugged my music! So, I chose a track to drop here. Since I'm writing Elio's Encore for Oliver right now, I figured I should give you a quasi-sneak peak by showing off my other piano piece from about a year ago. This is me playing, too, so in case you were wondering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDglZD5YpU0. Links to my soundcloud and website (which is garbage rn cuz I need new photos) are in the description. No pressure to look if you don't wanna, I get it, I just thought I should make my career advisor proud.


	11. Snapshot 11: The Train

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm really, really sorry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Check updated tags, but kind of spoilers I guess? 
> 
> I really am sorry.

_Oliver – 38 years later, 2043_

            I listen to the steady, rhythmic, deceptively strong beeping with my eyes closed. The machine makes it sound like the heart it echoes is still beating strongly and confidently, but I know it is not. My hands, clutching Elio’s, shake slightly, and I’m not sure if it’s because I am afraid or because I am eighty-four years old. Maybe it is both. Hunched over in my chair, I gently press my lips to his knuckles, willing him with all the strength of my own beating heart to open his eyes, please God, make him open his eyes.

            The doctor says that the kind of multi-organ failure Elio experienced isn’t common and is even harder to treat. I’ve seen enough doctors say enough things to know what the look in his eyes meant. But I can’t believe it. Elio isn’t human like the rest of us, he is something more. He has something nobody else has, a glow, a vitality that will pull him through. I know he does. He has to. What, if not that vitality, pushed him to break the boundaries upon his world, the boundaries of fame and fortune, the boundaries of kindness and generosity, the boundaries of ‘acceptable’ lovers? Even now, lying in this hospital bed with tubes and sensors lining his arms and chest, oxygen going into his nose, faint bruises on his shoulder where he fell, his face is so elegant, framed as always by the most beautiful spray of grey curls, contoured with laugh lines and wrinkles, the drooping of old skin over cheeks looking less like age and more like wisdom. Any moment now, those beautiful eyes will open for me, and he’ll smile, and then in no time, we’ll be going home. Any moment now…

            Two hours later, he takes a deep, shuddering breath and I look up quickly. Though at first, his eyes are distant, glazed, after a few seconds Elio is back, and his eyes have locked onto mine. “Hello, Oliver,” he rasps out, his voice sounding dry and painful.

            “Hello, Elio,” I reply, relief flooding me, “How are you feeling?”

             He takes stock of his situation, glancing at all the cables and tubes, the monitors and fluids. “About as good as I look, I think.” I laugh at his dry humor, but I’m not able to keep the smile on my face as he asks, “How bad is it, Oliver?”

            I look away from him. “Not too bad.”

            “Ollie, don’t lie to me.” My lips form a tight line as I stare at the floor. I can’t say it out loud, I won’t, that makes it real, and I won’t let that happen. I can’t. “Oliver…”

            “The doctor says that if you make it to morning, you’ll be alright.”

            “But…”

            “…but he doesn’t … he doesn’t think…” I can’t, I can’t I can’t I can’t I-

            “He doesn’t think that’s likely.”

            “…No.” I tighten my grip on his hand, fighting back tears. “But I don’t agree.”

            “You don’t?”

            “No. I … I won’t let you.”

            He laughs, a small, sad, breathy laugh, coughs a few times, then lapses into silence. I run my thumb along his knuckles, back and forth and back again, wishing I could go in and fix it all myself, take a wrench or a glue stick to whatever it is that is broken. Here I am, beside the man I vowed to love and care for forever, and I am as helpless as a child.

            “Oliver, look at me.” I do, and find those eyes, so full of memories, and yet still as young as the day I met him. I remember first seeing those eyes, beautiful but without meaning at the time. I remember watching those eyes smile, on bikes in Italy, in an apartment in New York, on stages all around the world, in tuxedos before a rabbi, in the coziness of our living room as the snow fell outside our home. Somehow, they keep growing more beautiful in every memory, and are most beautiful of all right now. “I need you to promise me that you’ll keep going, when I’m gone.”

            My moment of wistful reminiscent respite is shattered. “Elio don’t say that-“

            “Oliver.” The gentleness with which he says my name stops my words on my lips, robs me of the will to pretend. I would have denied it till the end had he not given me permission to accept. He speaks with calm, and with acceptance, and with the open, vulnerable, veiled honesty that I’ve always loved in him. And that’s how I know. Elio never speaks lies behind veils, only truths. Come tomorrow morning I will once again be alone in this world. “Promise me.” Keep going? How will I keep going without you? How can I, after forty-five years, pretend like I can face this world without you again? I am too old to bear the suffering I once bore in my youth, my love. Where can I exist in our home without you, where else can I go where your absence won’t ache like a missing limb? What sounds shall I hear that won’t ring empty because your music, your voice is not among them? The whole of my world will freeze as Elio, Helios, my sun, goes out. How can I go on? “Please.” Ah, that is how.

            “I will try.” I finally say, my voice shaking.

            “Thank you.” He says, squeezing my hands gently. An odd little smile graces his lips, “It looks like it’s my turn to get on a train to somewhere you can’t follow. I’ll write, try to call.”

             The words are meant as a playful jab, but they cut straight through me, and suddenly I am unable to hold back the silent tears that roll down my cheeks. I see him react, see him wish to take the words back, and wish I could be stronger for him, but I can’t. “I don’t want you to go.” I tell him, my voice higher than I expected.

             “Neither do I.”

            “I’m not supposed to outlive you, Elio, it’s supposed to be the other way around.”

            “Well, we’ve always had a wild disregard for age, haven’t we?” I laugh for real then, and he does too. How can he make me laugh even now? He frees his hand from mine to feebly, clumsily wipe the tears away from my face. “Come lie with me, Oliver. I don’t want to go all alone.”

            All alone. I left him that way once, and I’ll be damned if I let it happen again, even now, especially now, despite my aching bones and disgruntled medics. Slowly, carefully, I maneuver my way around the machinery and tubes so that I am lying next to him, one arm pillowing his head, the other resting across his chest. What used to feel like the petite figure of a lithe man now feels like fragile papier-mache. I bury my nose in his hair as he weakly snuggles up against me, letting out a long sigh. “I still love this, Oliver.”

            More tears, dampening beautiful silver locks, “I still love this too. Us.” I reach up to cradle his face and, ignoring protesting joints, I raise myself up on my arm to gently, carefully plant a kiss on his lips. He returns it, but it lacks the powerful passion it once held – he doesn’t have enough life left. My tears streak his cheeks as I pull away. “Oliver,” I whisper to him.

            “Elio,” he whispers back. The heart monitor’s beeping becomes erratic for a second, and I fight back panic, but it returns to normal in a few moments. As I lay back, his hand reaches slowly up to untuck my Star of David from my shirt. He rubs it between thumb and fingers pensively, before asking, “Do you believe in heaven, Oliver?” I smile, and he reads my mind, smiling back, “I mean besides the one in Italy.”

            I let my hands find his own Star of David, bringing it to my lips the same way I kissed his knuckles hours ago. “I don’t know, Elio. But I hope it exists.”

            He nods. “I hope so too. I think it must. Love must go somewhere.” I am not quite quick enough to bite back the full throated sob his words evoke, and bury my face in his hair again, because I can’t bear to see his perfect face, the perfect face I am about to lose. It is easier to look at the photos of that which is lost than to watch as he disappears. I feel his hand rest gentle, weak against the back of my head. “Don’t cry, Oliver.”

            “I’m sorry. I can’t help it. I cried on the train, and now I’m crying on the platform, and I can’t help it Elio.” I know I sound near hysterics, but the dam has burst and I can’t hold back the flood, not now that time has torn down my defenses and left me alone, an old man.

            “But don’t you see? It’s just like last time.” His hand gently strokes my arm as he speaks, and I can’t believe that he is comforting me, not the other way around, “We’ll hug goodbye. I’ll watch you as the train pulls away from the station. And I’ll miss you, God knows I will. But this time, I know how the story ends.” He nudges me with his shoulder, and I raise my head to meet his eyes, confused. Elio’s beautiful, beautiful eyes, how can they still be full of such love, so much joy and laughter and brightness? “Fifteen years will pass. Not a moment will go by where I’m not thinking of you. I’ll ache for you, wonder how you’re doing, if you’re happy, what ‘Oliver life’ looks like. And then, when you’re ninety-nine, I’m going to send you a ticket. And when you arrive, I’ll be there waiting for you, with a whole concert of music ready to welcome you home.”

            I can’t speak. I sob and sob, hold him tightly as I can without breaking him, and he holds me in return as best he can, his silent strength my only rock in the storm. At one point, the doctor comes in and checks something, but says nothing and hurries out, leaving us alone. We lie that way for so long, and I find that, despite the pain, I am memorizing everything about him once again, everything I already know about him being engraved anew into my mind so I can store his smell, his feel, his voice, his breathing.

            Elio’s breathing is in fact what signals to me that something has changed. It hiccups, then begins to come in shallower gasps. He clears his throat, coughs, hands tightening on my arm. “Oliver, that’s the last call for the train.” He says gently, and for the first time, I hear just the tiniest bit of fear in his voice, underneath a layer of soothing reassurance.

            “I’ll get the doctor,” I say as his heart monitor starts to become erratic again, and stays that way, but his hand does not release me, keeping me lying beside him.

            “No,” he says softly, “Stay with me.”

            “Elio-“

            “Please,” his voice is shaking, almost a desperate plea, “Don’t leave me now.”

            I thought I was out of tears – I was wrong. “Okay.” I hold him close to me, almost spooning him as much as all the wires allow, cradling his body with my own, “Okay, I’m here. I’ll stay, I promise.”

            He holds onto me wherever he can as he continues, pausing irregularly to draw in shuddering breaths, “Do you remember when we were in Rome, and we wandered all night long, just so we wouldn’t have to face the morning?”

            “Of course I do. I remember everything, Elio.”

            “Everything?”

            “All forty-five years, every instant.” He nods, seeming relieved, his grip loosening slightly. A memory strikes me suddenly, and I whisper in his ear, “Elio, tomorrow, let’s go to San Clemente.”

            I can’t see, but I can hear the smile in his voice. “Oliver, tomorrow is today.” The heart monitor stops for a moment entirely, before continuing. He rolls to face me, his eyes finding mine with urgency now. There is fear in those eyes, and the fear almost undoes me. But, as if my eyes were the lifeline he needed, the fear drains away as I watch. “I love you, Elio,” he murmurs to me, his eyes filling instead with infinite calm, with happiness, with love, even as they fill with tears.

            “I love you, Oliver.”

            The heart monitor begins to emit a single long tone.

            For a moment, his eyes are still bright, vibrant, still mine. Then, they glaze, and I know he is gone. I hold him still, crying on his shoulder even as doctors and nurses rush in and try to push me off him. But I know they can’t bring him back. He just boarded a one way train, and neither hell nor high water can stop it. And he has taken my heart with him, and left me his own. We traded hearts, just as we traded names, traded rings, traded roles and words and swimming trunks. Everything that he was, I am also. We were made from one clay, molded in the same image, our bodies were one and the same. How does one go on when half of them is missing? _Promise me_. Somehow, I will go on, I will, Elio, because to let my last promise to you be a lie would be to kill everything in me that has ever loved you, and that would be a greater crime than any I have ever committed. I remember everything. I will always remember everything. And I am coming for you, I promise; just wait for me my love. I would have followed you to the ends of the earth. Now, I will wait by the phone, waiting for you to call, and when you do, I will follow you beyond them.

 

Epilogue:

            After a funeral filled with family, colleagues, students, and friends, Oliver scatters Elio’s ashes in the same way that his parents’ ashes were scattered. Oliver keeps a small amount of the ashes, and has them placed inside a locket that is then welded shut. He wears it upon his neck, beside his Star of David, for the rest of his life.

            Elio’s Star of David is passed down to Colin. Though he is not Jewish, he keeps it in a place of pride, hung upon the frame that holds his father’s image, always kept upon the mantle in every home. Colin is gifted many other things beyond just this, however. Besides Oliver and several charities important to him, Elio named Colin as the sole benefactor in his will. Along with receiving both of Elio’s pianos, Colin receives an immense amount of money. Elio’s only instruction to Colin is _Use this money to help you become the man I’ve always known you could be_. Colin chooses to use that money to sure up his financial situation and retire from touring, spending the time this saves him to focus on composing and volunteer work, becoming an active member and valuable donor to a wide variety of civil rights groups. His spouse, Alex, also retires from their career as a harpist, and works by his side. Their son, Samuel Michael Perlman, grows up to be a scientist whose focus is upon the care of trees, specifically trees bearing drupe-type fruits, like peaches and apricots. Neither Sam nor Colin are ever aware of how hilarious Grandpa Oliver thinks this is.

            Danny continues on his path as a novelist, continuing to turn out novels that are given various forms of critical acclaim. He did indeed marry Kyle, a wedding both Oliver and Elio were able to attend, and together they adopted two children. The first they named Alec, after the late brother lost in 9/11. In the days following Elio’s death, Alec, by then a teenager, is Oliver’s greatest comfort, visiting him often with the sweet, honest love that his namesake passed on to him. The second child they named Olivia, as it turned out that both husbands had a father named Oliver. She was Elio’s favorite, and would occasionally plink out notes on the keyboard beside him while he was alive. For many months after Elio’s death, she sits in the spot where the pianos used to be, looking as lost as her grandfather. It breaks Oliver’s heart anew every time. She ends up being not a concert pianist but an opera singer, becoming a star coloratura soprano. She and Colin always prepare the most beautiful duets for the family Christmas gatherings.

            Oliver grows strong in the wake of his loss. He made a promise and by god he is going to keep it. After months of silent walks through the parks of their small town, of meals eaten alone, of solitary grieving too deep to name, Oliver agrees to move to Chicago with Danny and Kyle. Here he discovers that, though things remind him of Elio still, they do so in a way that gifts him some of the vitality he so prized in his lover. He returns to the work he left at the time of Elio’s death, writing essays and books upon the ethics and philosophy around LGBT+ issues and rights and the concept of identity and connection within groups, as well as branching out into topics involving death and loss. He also ends up doing volunteer work as best he can at his advanced age, finding that working with young kids brings him the most joy of all; their boundless joy reminds him of Elio, and Alec, in all the best ways. Eventually, his age does begin to get to him, and Oliver has to spend more and more time in the house. He passes the time listening to old CD’s, sometimes of Elio playing, sometimes of pieces that Elio showed him over the forty five years they had together – a wide selection to choose from. Oliver lives exactly fifteen years longer than Elio. When Danny comes home that day, he finds his father, slumped over the kitchen table, with a cell phone wrapped loosely in one hand, and a forty-five year old ticket to a concert at the Lincoln Center in the other. Had anyone checked, they would have found that, impossibly, a number that had been disconnected for fifteen years was the last call received on it. And, through the tears, even Danny was able to see that Oliver, when he died, had been smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I KNOW PLEASE DON'T KILL ME I AM ALSO CRyING
> 
>  
> 
> So I know that all seemed awful final. And some of you have said the sweetest damn things and here I was thinking I was all done but now I'm finding it hard to say goodbye to y'all too. So let me give you the scoop:  
> The next month, I'm going to be working my butt off in all my free time to try to apply for a job that is way out of my league because why the hell not. Then, I'm gonna buckle down and finish Elio's encore. Then, THEN my friends, I may yet come back - hence no chapter limit on it yet. I may fill in some of the sizable gaps on their lives, there's so much to explore. That one little shock/quasi-spoiler in the Epilogue probably deserves explanation and fleshing out. And you are all so kind, and I'll... I'll miss you guys.  
> But - until then, this is goodbye for now. Thank you so so so much for all your support, loving, and just for taking the time to read the ramblings of a peach who fell in love with the story and the feeling and the message and couldn't let it go. You have all been so good and kind, and I adore each and every one of you who stuck with me. Enjoy your summer (or winter, if you're in the southern hemisphere, I'm here for it), be happy, love your life and yourself, and remember - our bodies, hearts, and minds are given to us only once. Don't squander them on things that don't make you happy. Feel free to reach out, for whatever reason, I love talking with you guys.


	12. Snapshot 12: Nightmares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Focused almost exclusively on Elio, three weeks after meeting Danny and Alec

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning and Disclaimer contain quasi-spoilers for this chapter.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> CW: discussion of sexual assault, body dysphoria. Seriously, it's heavy. If that shit makes you unhappy, don't read. There will be other chapters with less awfulness in it. 
> 
> Disclaimer: The feelings and experiences re: assault and dysphoria shown in this chapter are not things that I have personally experienced to that degree. My depiction is based off of my experience with lesser degrees of both experiences, synthesized with outside knowledge. It is not meant to be a universal depiction of all victims of assault or all people experiencing dysphoria. If I have misrepresented anything, I am sincerely sorry and would appreciate kind correction and education.

_Elio – 3 weeks after meeting Danny and Alec_

            There are few things in life more dreadful than being woken up by a loud slam upon your wall. I learned this fact, as so many do, in college, as my neighbors in the dorm came up with new and creative ways to fuck their bed frame into shared walls, and then again in my twenties when quasi-tenement apartment landlords had little motivation to tell the insane people next door to stop having boxing matches at 3 am. I’m well familiar with the shot of adrenaline, followed by the sleep-deprived lance of furious frustration, have learned to accept my circumstances and diffuse my rage back into sleepy calm. Especially now, with Oliver’s arms around me, returning to a state of happy relaxation should be easy.

            But it’s different when that slamming is accompanied by screams of terror in the voice of someone you love.

            I frantically extricate myself from Oliver’s limbs, throwing on a pair of sweat pants while Oliver groggily lifts his head. “What’s …?”

            “It’s Colin,” I say tersely, already almost out the door. His room is directly next to mine, and it takes only a few long strides to shove the door open and flip on the light. As I knew I would, I find him tangled in his sheets, his eyes crunched tightly shut against the nightmares, face red and stained with tears, head and arms and knees slamming into the wall as he fights against the demons only he can see. “No!” he screams, his voice breaking with sobs, “No, don’t touch me, don’t – somebody help me, please, please help me!”

            “Colin,” I say, trying to find the balance between loud enough to wake him and soft enough to not frighten him further, dodging flailing limbs as I reach to shake his shoulder, “Colin, wake up. Colin. Colin!” Finally raising my voice as his cries become increasingly incoherent and pitiful, I reach with both hands to give his shoulders a thorough, almost rough snap. His eyes fly open and his hands find mine, clawing at them to free himself. I instantly let go, both for his own benefit and mine, stifling a hiss as I feel his bitten-jagged nails break the skin of my fingers and palms. Still tangled, he scrambles as far from me as he can, curling in on himself in the corner, eyes glowing with wild terror. I put my hands out placatingly, “Colin, it’s me, it’s Elio. You’re home. You’re safe.” His breathing is still coming in ragged, adrenaline charged gasps, his body shaking, but I see him gradually return, pulling himself out of the nightmares and back into reality. And then, after about a minute, I hear his sobs change, a subtle difference of inflection I’ve learned to identify over the last two months. No longer are they sobs of panic, but of frustration, despair. That’s the cue that means I can sit down on his bed and pull him into my arms, let him bury his face in my shoulder as he curls against my chest, weeping. I murmur soft words to him, not really paying attention to their content, but to their tone – solid, reassuring, real.

            “Why do I have to live it over every night?” He gasps out after a while, one hand releasing its death grip on my shoulder to wipe at his face, “Every single night, it’s like they’re here. I can see their faces, I can hear every single word they said, I can feel every place they put their hands, their…” he shudders, curling tighter in on himself, “Why won’t they just go away? Wasn’t once enough?” I don’t know what to say, don’t know how to comfort him, so I simply run my hand over his golden hair and too-present spine, pull him closer, remind him I’m here, and listen. “It’s like… god, what if… what if I’m pregnant?”

            He says the word with such disgust he would have spit it from his mouth had it not been so laced with an undercurrent of dread. “We would know by now.” I assure him, placing one hand against his bare midriff. “It’s been too long.”

            “Doesn’t really matter anyway,” he says bitterly, looking down at his unbound chest, the gentle curves of his stomach and legs, “I don’t have to be pregnant for their plan to work. They … they violated this body knowing damn well that every time I remember, every time something reminds me, I will remember not just what they did, but that they did it to a god damn trap of a body that doesn’t even fit right.” Abruptly, his voice goes from anger and disgust to tiny, desolate, like the flip of a switch. “It’s like they’re always standing behind me, standing just around the corner, Elio. The things they said… I hear it over and over, whispers in my mind and they never, never go away. I almost… I almost believe them, sometimes.”

            “Only almost though, right?”

            “… usually.”

            I pull him into my lap as if he were a small child, not the nearly twenty two year old he is, and cradle him close to me. Before, he would have fought such an action, calling it sappy, but now he lies limp in my arms, resting against my chest without resistance – he has bigger demons to fight now. “Well, let me tell you something, Colin. Those men, whoever they were, don’t know anything about you. And they are worth less than the dirt on your shoe. Whatever they said, whatever they did, it will never change the fact that you are more a man than they will ever be.” He nods silently against my chest, sniffing. This is often how things go – he will spill out the contents of his fears, his anger, his disgust, his frustration, and then he will fall silent, empty and cold. And I hold him now as I have held him most nights since the night he came home, rocking him ever so gently as he carefully curates each breath, slow and deep, eyes closed, until his body slowly returns to a slightly more peaceful slumber.

            What does a father do when someone hurts their child this way, so deeply, so intimately? When I finally figured out what had happened, pieced together the incoherent screams and reluctant partial admissions, my first reaction was murderous. Had Colin not been sobbing in my arms, had he not called out for me as ‘Dad’ for the first time in a moment of unparalleled distress, I would have left that apartment with a kitchen knife and driven all the way to that alleyway where they dragged him and I would have hunted them down one by one. But now, the blind rage gone, the hopes of catching the perpetrators all but non-existent, what am I to do? How can I console him, what comfort can I offer? My beautiful boy, my son, look what they have done to you. Look at the still lingering bruises on your skin, shadows of much deeper wounds. Look at the way that the drugs in which your mind took refuge have ravaged your body, the skin too tight in some places, too loose in others, pale and paper thin. They have stolen your smile, they have stolen your laugh, and I can see still the holes left behind, despite your body relaxing slowly in my arms as your mind releases it’s hold over it. And how can I, strong as I am, offer anything to help you hold up your walls? What tools, what medicines, what magic can I use you to heal you? I have nothing but love to offer you my son. The strength must be your own, you must somehow find the courage to carry on. I can no more heal your wounds than I could the wings of a broken bird. All I can do is hold you, and hope that someday, you’ll fly again. The skies are waiting for you.

            Once Colin is fully asleep, I very slowly and gently lower him back into his bed, covering him with his thin sheet, before padding out of the room, shutting off the light and closing the door. I almost ruin the silence of the house when I feel two large arms wrap around my shoulders in the dark hallway, but recognize the smell of Oliver’s skin moments before I would have cried out. He is holding me from behind, his face tucked in my neck, and I am surprised to feel tears against my skin. “Oliver, are you okay?” I whisper, the whiplash of going from one tear stained face to another making me dizzy.

            “Ok? Elio… oh god, Elio. How can this world contain both people so cruel as them, and so perfect as you?” I rotate in his arms, so we are chest to chest, nose to nose. I feel another tear drop onto my cheeks – I’m unsure if it is his or mine.

            “Perfect? I’m useless, Oliver. I don’t know how to help him. I don’t know what to say or do.”

            “Perhaps, but all the same, you have no idea what I would have given to have a father like you.” His fingers find my shoulders, thumbs tracing my collar. “You are giving him all you have, all you can.” He pauses, then adds, “That’s what love is, I suppose.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This short lil chapter brought to you by:  
> -My project falling through  
> -Not having access to a piano  
> -My internship being extended another month  
> -Having reason to think about these two topics a lot recently
> 
> Still officially on hiatus, since I've got lots of stuff going on (holy mackerel do I have stuff going on) but hopefully this will help tide us all over for a while if this dry spell must continue for longer next time. Thank you always for reading and especially for so much kindness regarding the last chapter. You are all so insanely kind and sweet and I love all of you. Don't Forget To Be Awesome my fam, and I'll see you on the other side of the ~~war~~ Very Busy Time [tm].


	13. Snapshot 13: Delilah

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elio and Delilah finally meet

_Elio_

            I’m glad Colin isn’t here. He would be teasing me for my frankly adolescent behavior, flitting from activity to activity, location to location, office to piano to kitchen to couch to piano again, starting a lesson plan, a passage to practice, a drink, before heeding the urge to move on. I feel antsy, as if a summer heat from long ago has seeped into my skin and returned me to an age at which all things seemed new and worthy of my anxiety. My heart beats too fast, my fingers tap without my intention, I pace. And the worst part is, I’ve done it to myself, out of some sense of duty, or perhaps the resurfacing some long buried guilt.

            I jump when the intercom buzzes, set down my drink, and hurry to the door, pressing down the speaker button. “Hello?”

            “Uh, hi. Yes, Mr. Perlman? This is Delilah Singer… you asked me to call?”

            “Yes yes, I did I did. Please come in.” I buzz her in, then fidget for the minute or so it takes for her knock to break the interminable silence. I open the door too quickly, and I can tell from the wideness of her eyes that she noticed. She is rather beautiful - with her long hair pinned into a tight, high, professional looking bun, the full force of her striking cheekbones and jawline is unmasked. She wears a crisp pantsuit, the posterchild for a modern working woman. Only one thing belies her apparent unilateral power – the deep circles under her eyes shared only by the massively overworked and those who raise children, the latter being really just a subset of the former. Delilah is clearly a woman who can take care of herself, and given the right circumstances she looks like she could have taken what she wanted from this world and never looked back. Instead, she tied herself down, settled down, and the pantsuits and the high bun manage the Lincoln Center instead of owning it so that they can support and care for her two heirs. Perhaps she is living a sleepwalking life too, in a way, pressured into a family the same way Oliver was once. It is a happy life – Oliver tells me, told me, how much she loved her children, how she was a wonderful and dedicated mother, how much joy her children and work both brought her. Given the impossible chance to wake up, however, I think she might never sleep again. Then again, what do I know of it? Colin is the greatest gift I’ve ever been given.

            All this from a few seconds examining her. I’ve hesitated too long, she looks uncertain, uncomfortable. “Delilah,” I say, stepping aside to allow her passage, “It’s wonderful to finally meet you.” I close the door, giving her a moment to reorient herself in this new space. “Can I get you anything? Water, coffee, wine, something stronger?”

            “Coffee would be wonderful, thank you.” I’m suddenly glad that one of my fidgety activities had been to make a pot. However, the awkward silence that clogs the air between us as I retrieve said drink for her makes me regret offering it to her. I pour myself a cup as well, to give me something to do with my hands. “Please, let’s sit.”

            We settle down on the couches across from Samuel and Annella. The silence hangs a moment longer, until Delilah blessedly breaks it, “I’ve, uh, I’ve been a fan for a long time, Mr. Perlman.”

            “Please, call me Elio.”

            “… Elio. When I bought your first album, my, I must have been twenty eight, and I thought I might just be in love with you myself.” She laughs, but we’re both aware of the tension embedded in that sentence. She and Oliver would have been married for five or six years at that point. “I’ve listened to every album since. I was heartbroken when they told me that they hadn’t saved any tickets for employees at the Lincoln Center a few years back.” I meet her eyes, and fight the urge to flinch away from the pain in them. Her words aren’t accusations – admissions would be a much more accurate word.

            “I’m sorry,” I say, letting the double entendre lie heavy in the words, “If… if you’d like, I’d be happy to play a bit for you right now. If that would make up for it, at all.” I begin to stand, but she reaches out to put a hand on my arm, to keep me from rising.

            “No, no,” she says quickly, “That’s quite alright. I… I’d rather just talk with you.” I nod, settle back into the couch. She glances towards the door, then the hallway on the other side of the room.

            “Don’t worry, he won’t be coming,” I say, to fill the blank in the unspoken question, “He’s on a short business trip out of town.” She nods gratefully, and then the silence is back. We both sip our coffee. I fight the urge to fidget, to say something to fill the blank space.

            “I have to ask you something,” she suddenly blurts, as if the words had been building up inside her and finally split the seams. I don’t get the chance to gesture for her to go on as the words continue pouring from the tear, “I need to know if, when you’re with Ollie – with Oliver – are you… does…” the pouring of words grinds to a halt as sudden nerves dam them up, reducing them to a hesitant trickly “God this sounds awful, but I just… do you love him?” I stare at her, dumbfounded, as her words ring like a bell in the suddenly cleared air. “I don’t mean… I just, I. I love him – lov _ed_ him – so much, and I thought he loved me too, and I don’t know what he was missing, why I wasn’t enough, so I thought that maybe, maybe it was something else…” she trails off, now sounding uncertain if she should have spoken at all. In the silence that still stands, she finishes, “I just need to know if you love him like I loved him. That’s all.”

            I don’t know where to start. Of all the things I was expecting from Delilah Singer, this wasn’t it. Rage, passive aggression, sobbing, maybe, but not this. “Do I love him like you loved him?” I repeat back finally, slowly sounding the words out as if shaping them with my lips will help my brain process them. Her eyes are finally what push the words off the edge of my tongue – they do not rebuke or reproach, merely ask, plead, even, to hear the truth. “Delilah… when you felt his hand touch yours, touch your face or your shoulder, did you suddenly feel as if all other touch in your life had been lifeless, meaningless in comparison? When he smiled at you across a room, did all the world shrink until it was only you and him and that beautiful, perfect smile?” I shift forward in my seat so I’m leaning in, not to pressure her, but instead to make this moment we are sharing more private, more precious. “When you saw him playing with your children, did you see in him something young and vibrant that made you remember all the best parts of your childhood? Or when he cooked, did you swear you could taste the love he had stirred into every bite, and feel bought almost to tears? Did you ever pull him into an embrace and breathe in the smell of his skin, and wonder how it is you lived so many years of your life without it? The first time you kissed, did the whole world stop, did you get knocked over as the very earth ceased to rotate and you felt like this moment would never pass, you would never let it, because there was nothing else you wanted but this? When you made love, did you find that you could no longer pinpoint the space where your body ended and his began, because everything in you was meant for him, and everything in him was surely meant for you?” I pause to take one deep breath, carefully choosing words before continuing, “And in that moment, that solitary, glittering, agonizing moment where you realized that he belonged not only to you, but to someone else too, and that he was choosing them over you, did you feel as if, though your body yet lived, you yourself had died, had ceased to be? For how can one half of a being live when it’s other half has been cut away with the merciless knife of ‘I will never be yours again’? Did your life fade before you to a shade of grey so bland and unremarkable that nothing you did, no success or failing, no person nor place, could bring the light back into it? Did you wander through your waking hours, waiting for the blessed relief of sleep, where you could at least dream him back into your life, and your way back into his heart?” I reach out and take her hand. She jerks, almost as if to pull it away, but then falls still, letting her shaking fingers rest in mine. I use my other hand to touch her cheek, and raise her eyes to mine. Their tears echo the ones in my own. “Because if you have, Delilah. If you have felt all of those things – and I suspect you have – then yes. Yes, I have loved him as you loved him. I have felt all the joy and sorrow, and even the savage agony that will, one day, fade, even if the ache remains. I have felt it Delilah and I am so, so sorry.”

            Again, Delilah Singer defies my expectations. After such a speech, I myself would surely have flown into a fit of rage, or fled from the apartment entirely. But Delilah Singer, instead, moves to sit right next to me, and pulls me into an embrace, burying her face in the space between my shoulder and neck. Her hair smells like Christmas cinnamon as I hesitantly return the embrace, her tears running rivulets down my neck and along my shoulder. I search the room for anything to say, but there is nothing, no more words to be said. We understand one another, in a way no one else could; we have both felt the blinding brilliance of Oliver’s love, and what it feels like when that spotlight shifts to shine on the other. There is no blame, no anger, no malevolence. There is just the ache, the gentle throbbing of nostalgia and regret. And, above all, there is the love for this man, for Oliver. We would both fight and die for him. Or, as the case may be, fade into the background for him, instead. He does not mean us ill. The wounds he leaves us with are not his fault. And so, we carry on, in lightness or darkness, and pray to whoever might be listening that, in the end, he is happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope this lives up to what you may or may not have been hoping for :) Hope you're all doing well. <3
> 
> -LC


End file.
